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HOME  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
OF  MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

No.  6 

Editors  : 

HERBERT    FISHER,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 
Prof.  GILBERT  MURRAY,  Litt.D., 

LL.D.,  F.B.A. 
Prof.  J.  ARTHUR    THOMSON,  M.A. 
Prof.  WILLIAM  T.  BREWSTER,  M.A. 


THE   HOME    UNIVERSITY   LIBRARY 
OF  MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

VOLUMES  NOW  READY 

HISTORY  OF  WAR  AND  PEACE     .  G.  H.  Pebeis 

POLAR  EXPLORATION Db.W.B.Beuce,LL.D.,F.R.S.E. 

THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION   .    .    .  Hilaibe  Belloc,  M.  P. 

THE   STOCK  EXCHANGE :  A  Shobt 

Study  of  Investment  and  Speculation  F.  W.  HmsT 

IRISH  NATIONALITY Alice  Stopfobd  Gbben 

THE  SOCIAL  MOVEMENT    ....  J.  Ramsay  Macdonald,  MP. 

PARLIAMENT :  Its  Histoby,  Constitu- 
tion, and  Pbactice Sib  Couetnay  Ilbebt,  K.C.B., 

K.C.S.I. 

MODERN  GEOGRAPHY Maeion    I.    Newbigin,  D.S.C. 

(Lond.) 

WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE     ....    John  Masefd3ld. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  PLANTS    .    .    D.  H.  Scott,  M.  A.,  LL.D,  F.R.S. 

VOLUMES  READY  IN  JULY 

THE  OPENING-UP  OF  AFRICA    .    .    Sib  H.  H.  Johnston,  G.C.M.G., 

K.C.B.,  D.Sc.,  F.Z.S. 

MEDIAEVAL  EUROPE H.  W.  C.  Davis,  M.A. 

MOHAMMEDANISM D.    S.     Mabgoliouth,    M.A., 

D.Litt. 

THE   SCIENCE  OF   WEALTH     .     .     .    J.  A.  Hobson,  M.A. 

HEALTH   AND  DISEASE W.  Lesleb  Mackenzhs,  M.D. 

INTRODUCTION  TO  MATHEMATICS    A.  N.  Whitehead,  Sc.D.  F.R.S. 

THE  ANIMAL  WORLD F.  W.  Gamble,  D.Sc.,  F.R.S. 

EVOLUTION J.  Abthub  Thomson,  M.A.,  and 

Patbick  Geddes,  M.A. 

LIBERALISM L.  T.  Hobhojjse,  M.A. 

CRIME  AND  INSANITY Db.  C.  A.^Mebcieb,  F.R.C.P., 

F.R.C.S. 

*#*  Other  volumes  in  active  preparation 


IRISH 
NATIONALITY 


BY 


ALICE   STOPFORD    GREEN 

AUTHOR    OF    "TOWN    LIFE    IN    THE    FIFTEENTH    CENTURY  M 
"HENRY    II,"     "THE    MAKING    OF    IRELAND,"   ETC. 


NEW   YORK 
HENRY   HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

LONDON 
WILLIAMS   AND    N  ORG  ATE 


Copyright,  1911, 

BY 

HENRY    HOLT   AND    COMPANY 


13399iJ 


THE   UNIVERSITY    PRESS,    CAMBRIDGE,   UJS.A. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I    The  Gaels  in  Ireland 7 

II    Ireland  and  Europe 29 

III  The  Irish  Mission 40 

IV  Scandinavians  in  Ireland 57 

V   The  First  Irish  Revival 77 

VI    The  Norman  Invasion 96 

VII   The  Second  Irish  Revival       .     .     .     .  Ill 

VIII    The  Taking  of  the  Land 125 

IX   The  National  Faith  of  the  Irish  .     .  141 

X    Rule  of  the  English  Parliament    .     .  158 

XI   The  Rise  of  a  New  Ireland  ....  182 

XII    An  Irish  Parliament 198 

XIII    Ireland  under  the  Union 219 

Some  Irish  Writers  on  Irish  History  255 


IN    MEMORY 

OF 

THE   IRISH   DEAD 


IRISH  NATIONALITY 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   GAELS   IN   IRELAND 

Ireland  lies  the  last  outpost  of  Europe 
against  the  vast  flood  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean; 
unlike  all  other  islands  it  is  circled  round 
with  mountains,  whose  precipitous  cliffs  ris- 
ing sheer  above  the  water  stand  as  bulwarks 
thrown  up  against  the  immeasurable  sea. 

It  is  commonly  supposed  that  the  fortunes 
of  the  island  and  its  civilisation  must  by 
nature  hang  on  those  of  England.  Neither 
history  nor  geography  allows  this  theory. 
The  life  of  the  two  countries  was  widely 
separated.  Great  Britain  lay  turned  to  the 
east;  her  harbours  opened  to  the  sunrising, 
and  her  first  traffic  was  across  the  narrow 
waters  of  the  Channel  and  the  German  Sea. 
But  Ireland  had  another  aspect;   her  natural 


8  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

harbours  swelled  with  the  waves  of  the 
Atlantic,  her  outlook  was  over  the  ocean, 
and  long  before  history  begins  her  sailors 
braved  the  perils  of  the  Gaulish  sea.  The 
peoples  of  Britain,  Celts  and  English,  came 
to  her  from  the  opposite  lowland  coasts;  the 
people  of  Ireland  crossed  a  wider  ocean-track, 
from  northern  France  to  the  shores  of  the 
Bay  of  Biscay.  The  two  islands  had  a 
different  history;  their  trade-routes  were 
not  the  same;  they  lived  apart,  and  developed 
apart  their  civilisations. 

We  do  not  know  when  the  Gaels  first 
entered  Ireland,  coming  according  to  ancient 
Irish  legends  across  the  Gaulish  sea.  One 
invasion  followed  another,  and  an  old  Irish 
tract  gives  the  definite  Gaelic  monarchy  as 
beginning  in  the  fourth,  century  B.C.  They 
drove  the  earlier  peoples,  the  Iberians,  from 
the  stupendous  stone  forts  and  earthen  en- 
trenchments that  guarded  cliffs  and  moun- 
tain passes..  The  name  of  Erin  recalls  the 
ancient  inhabitants,  who  lived  on  under  the 
new  rulers,  more  in  number  than  their  con- 
querors. The  Gaels  gave  their  language  and 
I  their    organisation    to    the    country,    while 


THE  GAELS  IN  IRELAND  9 

many  customs  and  traditions  of  the  older 
race  lingered  on  and  penetrated  the  new 
people. 

Over  a  thousand  years  of  undisturbed  life 
lay  before  the  Gaels,  from  about  300  B.C.  to 
800  a.d.  The  Roman  Empire  which  overran 
Great  Britain  left  Ireland  outside  it.  The 
barbarians  who  swept  over  the  provinces  of 
the  empire  and  reached  to  the  great  Roman 
Wall  never  crossed  the  Irish  Sea. 

Out  of  the  grouping  of  the  tribes  there 
emerged  a  division  of  the  island  into  districts 
made  up  of  many  peoples.  Each  of  the  prov- 
inces later  known  as  Ulster,  Leinster,  Mun- 
ster  and  Connacht  had  its  stretch  of  seaboard 
and  harbours,  its  lakes  and  rivers  for  fishing, 
its  mountain  strongholds,  its  hill  pastures, 
and  its  share  of  the  rich  central  plain,  where 
the  cattle  from  the  mountains  "used  to  go  in 
their  running  crowds  to  the  smooth  plains 
of  the  province,  towards  their  sheds  and  their 
full  cattle-fields."  All  met  in  the  middle  of 
the  island,  at  the  Hill  of  Usnech,  where  the 
Stone  of  Division  still  stands.  There  the 
high-king  held  his  court,  as  the  chief  lord  in 
the  confederation  of  the  many  states.     The 


10  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

rich  lands  of  Meath  were  the  high-king's 
domain. 

Heroic  tales  celebrate  the  prehistoric  con- 
flicts as  of  giants  by  which  the  peoples  fixed 
the  boundaries  of  their  power.  They  tell 
of  Conor  Mac  Nessa  who  began  to  reign  in 
the  year  that  Mark  Antony  and  Cleopatra 
died,  and  of  his  sister's  son  Cuchulain,  the 
champion  of  the  north,  who  went  out  to 
battle  from  the  vast  entrenchments  still  seen 
in  Emain  Macha  near  Armagh.  Against  him 
Queen  Maeve  gathered  at  her  majestic  fort 
of  Rathcroghan  in  Roscommon  fifteen  hun- 
dred royal  mercenaries  and  Gaulish  soldiers 
— a  woman  comely  and  white-faced,  with 
gold  yellow  hair,  her  crimson  cloak  fastened 
at  the  breast  with  a  gold  pin,  and  a  spear 
flaming  in  her  hand,  as  she  led  her  troops 
across  the  Boyne.  The  battles  of  the  heroes 
on  the  Boyne  and  the  fields  of  Louth,  the 
thronged  entrenchments  that  thicken  round 
the  Gap  of  the  North  and  the  mountain  pass 
from  Dundalk  and  Newry  into  the  plains  of 
Armagh  and  Tyrone,  show  how  the  soldiers' 
line  of  march  was  the  same  from  the  days  of 
Cuchulain  to  those  of  William  of  Orange. 


THE   GAELS  IN  IRELAND  11 

The  story  tells  how  the  whole  island  shared 
in  the  great  conflict,  to  the  extreme  point  of 
Munster,  where  a  rival  of  Cuchulain,  Curoi 
son  of  Dare,  had  sent  his  knights  and  war- 
riors through  all  Ireland  to  seek  out  the 
greatest  stones  for  his  fortress,  on  a  shelf  of 
rock  over  two  thousand  feet  above  the  sea 
near  Tralee.  The  Dublin  Museum  preserves 
relics  of  that  heroic  time,  the  trappings  of 
war-chariots  and  horses,  arms  and  ornaments. 

Amid  such  conflicts  the  Connacht  kings 
pressed  eastward  from  Usnech  to  Tara,  and 
fixed  there  the  centre  of  Irish  life. 

The  Gaelic  conquerors  had  entered  on  a 
wealthy  land.  Irish  chroniclers  told  of  a 
vast  antiquity,  with  a  shadowy  line  of  mon- 
archs  reaching  back,  as  they  boasted,  for 
some  two  thousand  years  before  Christ: 
they  had  legends  of  lakes  springing  forth  in 
due  order;  of  lowlands  cleared  of  wood,  the 
appearance  of  rivers,  the  making  of  roads 
and  causeways,  the  first  digging  of  wells: 
of  the  making  of  forts;  of  invasions  and 
battles  and  plagues.  They  told  of  the  smelt- 
ing of  gold  near  the  LifTey  about  1500  B.C. 
and  of  the  Wicklow  artificer  who  made  cups 


12  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

and  brooches  of  gold  and  silver,  and  silver 
shields,  and  golden  chains  for  the  necks  of 
kings;  and  of  the  discovery  of  dyes,  purple 
and  blue  and  green,  and  how  the  ranks  of 
men  were  distinguished  henceforth  by  the 
colour  of  their  raiment.  They  had  traditions 
of  foreign  trade  —  of  an  artificer  drowned 
while  bringing  golden  ore  from  Spain,  and 
of  torques  of  gold  from  oversea,  and  of  a 
lady's  hair  all  ablaze  with  Alpine  gold. 
Later  researches  have  in  fact  shown  that 
Irish  commerce  went  back  some  fifteen  hun- 
dred years  before  our  era,  that  it  was  the 
most  famous  gold-producing  country  of  the 
west,  that  mines  of  copper  and  silver  were 
worked,  and  that  a  race  of  goldsmiths  prob- 
ably carried  on  the  manufacture  of  bronze 
and  gold  on  what  is  now  the  bog  of  Cullem 
Some  five  hundred  golden  ornaments  of  old 
times  have  been  gathered  together  in  the 
Dublin  Museum  in  the  last  eighty  years,  a 
scanty  remnant  of  what  have  been  lost  or 
melted  down;  their  weight  is  five  hundred 
and  seventy  ounces  against  a  weight  of 
tewnty  ounces  in  the  British  Museum  from 
England,  Scotland,  and  Wales. 


THE   GAELS  IN  IRELAND  13 

The  earth  too  was  fruitful.  The  new 
settlers,  who  used  iron  tools  instead  of  bronze, 
could  clear  forests  and  open  plains  for  tillage. 
Agriculture  was  their  pride,  and  their  legends 
told  of  stretches  of  corn  so  great  that  deer 
could  shelter  in  them  from  the  hounds,  and 
nobles  and  queens  drove  chariots  along  their 
far-reaching  lines,  while  multitudes  of  reapers 
were  at  work  cutting  the  heads  of  the  grain 
with  the  little  sickles  which  we  may  still  see 
in  the  Dublin  Museum. 

But  to  the  Irish  the  main  interest  of  the 
Gaels  lies  in  their  conception  of  how  to  create 
an  enduring  state  or  nation. 

The  tribal  system  has  been  much  derided 
as  the  mark  of  a  savage  people,  or  at  least 
of  a  race  unable  to  advance  beyond  political 
infancy  into  a  real  national  existence.  This 
was  not  true  of  the  Gaels.  Their  essential 
idea  of  a  state,  and  the  mode  of  its  govern- 
ment and  preservation,  was  different  from 
that  of  mediaeval  Europe,  but  it  was  not 
uncivilised. 

The  Roman  Empire  stamped  on  the  minds 
of  its  subject  peoples,  and  on  the  Teutonic 
barbarians  who  became  its  heirs,  the  notion 


14  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  a  state  as  an  organisation  held  together, 
defended,  governed  and  policed,  by  a  central 
ruler;  while  the  sovereign  was  supreme  in  the 
domain  of  force  and  maintenance  of  order, 
whatever  lay  outside  that  domain  —  art, 
learning,  history  and  the  like  —  were  second- 
ary matters  which  might  be  left  to  the  people. 
The  essential  life  of  the  nation  came  to  be 
expressed  in  the  will  and  power  of  its  master. 
The  Gaelic  idea  was  a  wholly  different  one. 
The  law  with  them  was  the  law  of  the  people. 
They  never  lost  their  trust  in  it.  Hence  they 
never  exalted  a  central  authority,  for  their 
law  needed  no  such  sanction.  While  the 
code  was  one  for  the  whole  race,  the  adminis- 
tration on  the  other  hand  was  divided  into 
the  widest  possible  range  of  self-governing 
communities,  which  were  bound  together 
in  a  willing  federation.  The  forces  of  union 
were  not  material  but  spiritual,  and  the  life 
of  the  people  consisted  not  in  its  military 
cohesion  but  in  its  joint  spiritual  inheritance 
—  in  the  union  of  those  who  shared  the  same 
tradition,  the  same  glorious  memory  of 
heroes,  the  same  unquestioned  law,  and  the 
same  pride  of  literature.     Such  an  instinct 


THE   GAELS  IN  IRELAND  15 

of  national  life  was  neither  rude  nor  con- 
temptible, nor  need  we  despise  it  because  it 
was  opposed  to  the  theory  of  the  middle  ages 
in  Europe.  At  the  least  the  Irish  tribal 
scheme  of  government  contained  as  much 
promise  of  human  virtue  and  happiness  as 
the  feudal  scheme  which  became  later  the 
political  creed  of  England,  but  which  was 
never  accepted  in  Ireland.  Irish  history  can 
only  be  understood  by  realising  this  intense 
national  life  with  its  sure  basis  on  the  broad 
self-government  of  the  people. 

Each  tribe  was  supreme  within  its  own 
borders;  it  elected  its  own  chief,  and  could 
depose  him  if  he  acted  against  law.  The 
land  belonged  to  the  whole  community,  which 
kept  exact  pedigrees  of  the  families  who  had 
a  right  to  share  in  the  ground  for  tillage  or  in 
the  mountain  pasturage;  and  the  chief  had 
no  power  over  the  soil  save  as  the  elected 
trustee  of  the  people.  The  privileges  of  the 
various  chiefs,  judges,  captains,  historians, 
poets,  and  so  on,  were  handed  down  from 
generation  to  generation.  In  all  these  matters 
no  external  power  could  interfere.  The  tribe 
owed  to  the  greater  tribe  above  it  nothing 


16  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

but  certain  fixed  dues,  such  as  aid  in  road- 
making,  in  war,  in  ransom  of  prisoners  and 
the  like. 

The  same  right  of  self-government  extended 
through  the  whole  hierarchy  of  states  up 
to  the  Ardri  or  high-king  at  the  head.  The 
"hearth  of  Tara"  was  the  centre  of  all  the 
Gaelic  states,  and  the  demesne  of  the  Ardri. 
"This  then  is  my  fostermother,"  said  the 
ancient  sage,  "  the  island  in  which  ye  are, 
even  Ireland,  and  the  familiar  knee  of  this 
island  is  the  hill  on  which  ye  are,  namely, 
Tara."  There  the  Ardri  was  crowned  at  the 
pillar-post.  At  Tara,  "the  fort  of  poets 
and  learned  men,"  the  people  of  all  Ireland 
gathered  at  the  beginning  of  each  high-king's 
reign,  and  were  entertained  for  seven  days 
and  nights  —  kings  and  ollaves  together 
round  the  high-king,  warriors  and  reavers,  to- 
gether, the  youths  and  maidens  and  the  proud 
foolish  folk  in  the  chambers  round  the  doors, 
while  outside  was  for  young  men  and  maidens 
because  their  mirth  used  to  entertain  them. 
Huge  earthen  banks  still  mark  the  site  of 
the  great  Hall,  seven  hundred  and  sixty  feet 
long  and  ninety  feet  wide,  with  seven  doors 


THE  GAELS  IN  IRELAND  17 

to  east  and  as  many  more  to  west;  where 
kings  and  chiefs  sat  each  under  his  own 
shield,  in  crimson  cloaks  with  gold  brooches, 
with  girdles  and  shoes  of  gold,  and  spears 
with  golden  sockets  and  rivets  of  red  bronze. 
The  Ardri,  supreme  lord  and  arbitrator 
among  them,  was  surrounded  by  his  coun- 
cillors —  the  law-men  or  brehons,  the  bards 
and  chroniclers,  and  the  druids,  teachers  and 
men  of  science.  He  was  the  representative 
of  the  whole  national  life.  But  his  power 
rested  on  the  tradition  of  the  people  and  on 
the  consent  of  the  tribes.  He  could  impose 
no  new  law;  he  could  demand  no  service 
outside  the  law. 

The  political  bond  of  union,  which  seemed 
so  loose,  drew  all  its  strength  from  a  body  of 
national  tradition,  and  a  universal  code  of 
law,  which  represented  as  it  were  the  common 
mind  of  the  people,  the  spontaneous  creation 
of  the  race.  Separate  and  independent  as  the 
tribes  were,  all  accepted  the  one  code  which 
had  been  fashioned  in  the  course  of  ages  by 
the  genius  of  the  people.  The  same  law  was 
recited  in  every  tribal  assembly.  The  same 
traditions  and  genealogies  bound  the  tribes 


18  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

together  as  Having  a  single  heritage  of  heroic 
descent  and  fame.  The  preservation  of 
their  common  history  was  the  concern  of 
the  whole  people.  One  of  the  tales  pictures 
their  gathering  at  Tara,  when  before  the 
men  of  Ireland  the  ancients  related  their 
history,  and  Ireland's  chief  scholars  heard 
and  corrected  them  by  the  best  tradition. 
"  Victory  and  blessings  attend  you,  noble 
sirs,"  the  men  of  Erin  said;  "for  such  in- 
struction it  was  meet  that  we  should  gather 
ourselves  together."  And  at  the  recit- 
ing of  the  historic  glories  of  their  past, 
the  whole  congregation  arose  up  together 
"for  in  their  eyes  it  was  an  augmenting  of 
the  spirit  and  an  enlargement  of  the  mind." 
To  preserve  this  national  tradition  a 
learned  class  was  carefully  trained.  There 
were  schools  of  lawyers  to  expound  the  law; 
schools  of  historians  to  preserve  the  genealo- 
gies, the  boundaries  of  lands,  and  the  rights 
of  classes  and  families;  and  schools  of  poets 
to  recite  the  traditions  of  the  race.  The 
learned  men  were  paid  at  first  by  the  gifts 
of  the  people,  but  the  chief  among  them  were 
later  endowed  with  a  settled  share  of  the 


THE   GAELS  IN  IRELAND  19 

tribe  land  in  perpetuity.  So  long  as  the  fam- 
ily held  the  land,  they  were  bound  to  train  up 
in  each  generation  that  one  of  the  house- 
hold who  was  most  fit  to  carry  on  learning, 
and  thus  for  centuries  long  lines  of  distin- 
guished men  added  fame  to  their  country 
and  drew  to  its  schools  students  from  far  and 
wide.  Through  their  work  the  spirit  of  the 
Irish  found  national  expression  in  a  code  of 
law  which  showed  not  only  extraordinarily 
acute  and  trained  intelligence  but  a  true 
sense  of  equity,  in  a  literary  language  of  great 
richness  and  of  the  utmost  musical  beauty, 
and  in  a  system  of  meterical  rules  for  poets 
shaped  with  infinite  skill.  The  Irish  nation 
had  a  pride  in  its  language  beyond  any 
people  in  Europe  outside  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans. 

While  each  tribe  had  its  schools,  these  were 
linked  together  in  a  national  system.  Pro- 
fessors of  every  school  were  free  of  the  island; 
it  was  the  warrior's  duty  to  protect  them  as 
they  moved  from  court  to  court.  An  ancient 
tale  tells  how  the  chiefs  of  Emain  near 
Armagh  placed  sentinels  along  the  Gap  of  the 
North  to  turn  back  every  poet  who  sought  to 


20  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

leave  the  country  and  to  bring  on  their  way 
with  honour  every  one  who  sought  to  enter 
in.  There  was  no  stagnation  where  compe- 
tition extended  over  the  whole  island.  The 
greatest  of  the  teachers  were  given  the  dignity 
of  "Professors  of  all  the  Gaels."  Learned 
men  in  their  degrees  ranked  with  kings  and 
chiefs,  and  high-professors  sat  by  the  high- 
king  and  shared  his  honours.  The  king,  said 
the  laws,  "could  by  his  mere  word  decide 
against  every  class  of  persons  except  those  of 
the  two  orders  of  religion  and  learning,  who 
are  of  equal  value  with  himself." 

It  is  in  this  exaltation  of  learning  in  the 
national  life  that  we  must  look  for  the  real 
significance  of  Irish  history  —  the  idea  of  a 
society  loosely  held  in  a  political  sense,  but 
bound  together  in  a  spiritual  union.  The 
assemblies  which  took  place  in  every  province 
and  every  petty  state  were  the  guarantees 
of  the  national  civilization.  They  were 
periodical  exhibitions  of  everything  the  peo- 
ple esteemed  —  democracy,  aristocracy,  king- 
craft, literature,  tradition,  art,  commerce, 
law,  sport,  religion,  display,  even  rustic 
buffoonery.    The  years  between  one  festival 


THE  GAELS  IN  IRELAND  21 

and  another  were  spent  in  serious  preparation 
for  the  next;  a  multitude  of  maxims  were 
drawn  up  to  direct  the  conduct  of  the  people. 
So  deeply  was  their  importance  felt  that  the 
Irish  kept  the  tradition  diligently,  and  even 
in  the  darkest  times  of  their  history,  down 
to  the  seventeenth  century,  still  gathered  to 
"meetings  on  hills"  to  exercise  their  law 
and  hear  their  learned  men. 

In  the  time  of  the  Roman  Empire,  there- 
fore, the  Irish  looked  on  themselves  as  one 
race,  obedient  to  one  law,  united  in  one 
culture  and  belonging  to  one  country.  Their 
unity  is  symbolised  by  the  great  genealogical 
compilations  in  which  all  the  Gaels  are  traced 
to  one  ancestry,  and  in  the  collections  of 
topographical  legends  dealing  with  hundreds 
of  places,  where  every  nook  and  corner  of  the 
island  is  supposed  to  be  of  interest  to  the 
whole  of  Ireland.  The  tribal  boundaries  were 
limits  to  the  material  power  of  a  chief  and 
to  that  only:  they  were  no  barriers  to  the 
national  thought  or  union.  The  learned  man 
of  the  clan  was  the  learned  man  of  the  Gaelic 
race.  By  all  the  higher  matters  of  language 
and  learning,  of  equity  and  history,  the  people 


%%  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  Ireland  were  one.  A  noble  figure  told  the 
unity  of  their  land  within  the  circuit  of  the 
ocean.  The  Three  Waves  of  Erin,  they  said, 
smote  upon  the  shore  with  a  foreboding  roar 
when  danger  threatened  the  island;  Cleena's 
wave  called  to  Munster  at  an  inlet  near  Cork, 
while  Tonn  Rury  at  Dundrum  and  Tonn 
Tuaithe  at  the  mouth  of  the  Bann  sounded 
to  the  men  of  Ulster. 

The  weaknesses  of  the  Irish  system  are 
apparent.  The  numerous  small  territories 
were  tempted,  like  larger  European  states, 
to  raid  borders,  to  snatch  land  or  booty,  and 
to  suffer  some  expense  of  trained  soldiers. 
Candidates  for  the  chief dom  had  to  show 
their  fitness,  and  "a  young  lord's  first  spoil" 
was  a  necessary  exploit.  There  were  wild 
plundering  raids  in  the  summer  nights;  dis- 
orders were  multiplied.  A  country  divided 
in  government  was  weakened  for  purposes 
of  offence,  or  for  joint  action  in  military 
matters.  These  evils  were  genuine,  but  they 
have  been  exaggerated.  Common  action  was 
hindered,  not  mainly  by  human  contentions, 
but  by  the  forests  and  marshes,  lakes  and 
rivers  in  flood  that  lay  over  a  country  heavy 


THE  GAELS  IN  IRELAND  23 

with  Atlantic  clouds.  Riots  and  forays  there 
were,  among  a  martial  race  and  strong  men  of 
hot  passions,  but  Ireland  was  in  fact  no  promi- 
nent example  of  mediaeval  anarchy  or  dis- 
order. Local  feuds  were  no  greater  than 
those  which  afflicted  England  down  to  the  Nor- 
man Conquest  and  long  after  it;  and  which 
marked  the  life  of  European  states  and  cities 
through  the  middle  ages.  The  professional 
war  bands  of  Fiana  that  hired  themselves  out 
from  time  to  time  were  controlled  and  recog- 
nised by  law,  and  had  their  special  organi- 
sation and  rites  and  rules  of  war.  It  has  been 
supposed  that  in  the  passion  of  tribal  disputes 
men  mostly  perished  by  murder  and  battle- 
slaughter,  and  the  life  of  every  generation 
was  by  violence  shortened  to  less  than  the 
common  average  of  thirty  years.  Irish  gen- 
ealogies prove  on  the  contrary  that  the  gener- 
ations must  be  counted  at  from  thirty-three 
to  thirty-six  years:  the  tale  of  kings,  judges, 
poets,  and  householders  who  died  peace- 
fully in  an  honoured  old  age,  or  from  some 
natural  accident,  outruns  the  list  of  sudden 
murders  or  deaths  in  battle.  Historical 
evidence   moreover   shows   us  a  country  of 


24  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

widening  cornfields,  or  growing  commerce, 
where  wealth  was  gathered,  where  art  and 
learning  swept  like  a  passion  over  the  people, 
and  schools  covered  the  land.  Such  indus- 
tries and  virtues  do  not  flourish  in  regions 
given  over  to  savage  strife.  And  it  is  signifi- 
cant that  Irish  chiefs  who  made  great  wars 
hired  professional   soldiers   from  oversea. 

If  the  disorders  of  the  Irish  system  have 
been  magnified  its  benefits  have  been  for- 
gotten. All  Irish  history  proved  that  the 
division  of  the  land  into  separate  military 
districts,  where  the  fighting  men  knew  every 
foot  of  ground,  and  had  an  intense  local 
patriotism,  gave  them  a  power  of  defence 
which  made  conquest  by  the  foreigner  im- 
possible; he  had  first  to  exterminate  the 
entire  people.  The  same  division  into  ad- 
ministrative districts  gave  also  a  singular 
authority  to  law.  In  mediaeval  states,  how- 
ever excellent  were  the  central  codes,  they 
were  only  put  in  force  just  so  far  as  the  king 
had  power  to  compel  men  to  obey,  and  that 
power  often  fell  very  far  short  of  the  nominal 
boundaries  of  his  kingdom.  But  in  Ireland 
every  community  and  every  individual  was 


THE  GAELS  IN  IRELAND  25 

interested  in  maintaining  the  law  of  the  peo- 
ple, the  protection  of  the  common  folk;  nor 
were  its  landmarks  ever  submerged  or  de- 
stroyed. Irish  land  laws,  for  example,  in  spite 
of  the  changes  that  gradually  covered  the 
land  with  fenced  estates,  did  actually  pre- 
serve through  all  the  centuries  popular  rights 
—  fixity  of  rates  for  the  land,  fixity  of  tenure, 
security  of  improvement,  refusal  to  allow 
great  men  to  seize  forests  for  their  chase: 
under  this  people's  law  no  Peasant  Revolt 
ever  arose,  nor  any  rising  of  the  poor  against 
their  lords.  Rights  of  inheritance,  due 
solemnities  of  election,  were  accurately  pre- 
served. The  authority  and  continuity  of 
Irish  law  was  recognised  by  wondering 
Englishmen  —  "They  observe  and  keep  such 
laws  and  statutes  which  they  make  upon  hills 
in  their  country  firm  and  stable,  without 
breaking  them  for  any  favour  or  reward,"  said 
an  English  judge.  "The  Irish  are  more  fear- 
ful to  offend  the  law  than  the  English  or  any 
other  nation  whatsoever." 

The  tribal  system  had  another  benefit 
for  Irishmen  —  the  diffusion  of  a  high  intelli- 
gence among  the  whole  people.     A  varied 


26  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

education,  spread  over  many  centres,  fer- 
tilized the  general  life.  Every  countryside 
that  administered  its  own  affairs  must  of 
needs  possess  a  society  rich  in  all  the  activities 
that  go  to  make  up  a  full  community —  chiefs, 
doctors,  soldiers,  judges,  historians,  poets, 
artists  and  craftsmen,  skilled  herds,  tillers 
of  the  ground,  raisers  and  trainers  of  horses, 
innkeepers,  huntsmen,  merchants,  dyers  and 
weavers  and  tanners.  In  some  sequestered 
places  in  Ireland  we  can  still  trace  the  settle- 
ments made  by  Irish  communities.  They 
built  no  towns  nor  needed  any  in  the  modern 
sense.  But  entrenchments  of  earth,  or 
"raths,"  thickly  gathered  together,  mark  a 
site  where  men  lived  in  close  association. 
Roads  and  paths  great  and  small  were 
maintained  according  to  law,  and  boats 
carried  travellers  along  rivers  and  lakes.  So 
frequent  were  the  journeys  of  scholars, 
traders,  messengers  from  tribe  to  tribe,  men 
gathering  to  public  assemblies,  craftsmen, 
dealers  in  hides  and  wool,  poets,  men  and 
women  making  their  circuit,  that  there  was 
made  in  early  time  a  "road-book"  or  itinerary, 
perhaps  some  early  form  of  map,  of  Ireland. 


THE  GAELS  IN  IRELAND  27 

This  life  of  opportunity  in  thickly  congre- 
gated country  societies  gave  to  Ireland  its 
wide  culture,  and  the  incredible  number  of 
scholars  and  artificers  that  it  poured  out 
over  Europe  with  generous  ardour.  The 
multitudinous  centres  of  discussion  scattered 
over  the  island,  and  the  rapid  intercourse 
of  all  these  centres  one  with  another,  explain 
how  learning  broadened,  and  how  Christian- 
ity spread  over  the  land  like  a  flood.  It  was 
to  these  country  settlements  that  the  Irish 
owed  the  richness  of  their  civilisation,  the 
generosity  of  their  learning,  and  the  passion 
of  their  patriotism. 

Ireland  was  a  land  then  as  now  of  intense 
contrasts,  where  equilibrium  was  maintained 
by  opposites,  not  by  a  perpetual  tending 
towards  the  middle  course.  In  things  politi- 
cal and  social  the  Irish  showed  a  conserv- 
atism that  no  intercourse  could  shake,  side 
by  side  with  eager  readiness  and  great  suc- 
cess in  grasping  the  latest  progress  in  arts  or 
commerce.  In  their  literature  strikingly 
modern  thoughts  jostle  against  the  most 
primitive  crudeness;  "Vested  interests  are 
shameless"  was  one  of  their  old  observations. 


28  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

In  Ireland  the  old  survived  beside  the  new, 
and  as  the  new  came  by  free  assimilation  old 
and  new  did  not  conflict.  The  balance  of 
opposites  gave  colour  and  force  to  their 
civilisation,  and  Ireland  until  the  thirteenth 
century  and  very  largely  until  the  seven- 
teenth century,  escaped  or  survived  the  suc- 
cessive steam  rollings  that  reduced  Europe 
to  nearly  one  common  level. 

In  the  Irish  system  we  may  see  the  shaping 
of  a  true  democracy  —  a  society  in  which 
ever-broadening  masses  of  the  people  are 
made  intelligent  sharers  in  the  national  life, 
and  conscious  guardians  of  its  tradition. 
Their  history  is  throughout  a  record  of  the 
nobility  of  that  experiment.  It  would  be  a 
mechanical  theory  of  human  life  which  denied 
to  the  people  of  Ireland  the  praise  of  a  true 
patriotism  or  the  essential  spirit  of  a  nation. 


CHAPTER  II 

IEELAND   AND   EUROPE 
C.  100-C.  600 

The  Roman  Agricola  had  proposed  the  con- 
quest of  Ireland  on  the  ground  that  it  would 
have  a  good  effect  on  Britain  by  remov- 
ing the  spectacle  of  liberty.  But  there  was 
no  Roman  conquest.  The  Irish  .remained 
outside  the  Empire,  as  free  as  the  men  of 
Norway  and  Sweden.  They  showed  that  to 
share  in  the  trade,  the  culture,  and  the  civil- 
isation of  an  empire,  it  is  not  necessary  to  be 
subject  to  its  armies  or  lie  under  its  police 
control.  While  the  neighbouring  peoples  re- 
ceived a  civilisation  imposed  by  violence 
and  maintained  by  compulsion,  the  Irish  were 
free  themselves  to  choose  those  things  which 
were  suited  to  their  circumstances  and  char- 
acter, and  thus  to  shape  for  their  people  a 
liberal  culture,  democratic  and  national. 

29 


30  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

It  is  important  to  observe  what  it  was  that 
tribal  Ireland  chose,  and  what  it  rejected. 

There  was  frequent  trade,  for  from  the 
first  century  Irish  ports  were  well  known  to 
merchants  of  the  Empire,  sailing  across  the 
Gaulish  sea  in  wooden  ships  built  to  confront 
Atlantic  gales,  with  high  poops  standing  from 
the  water  like  castles,  and  great  leathern  sails 
—  stout  hulls  steered  by  the  born  sailors  of 
the  Breton  coasts  or  the  lands  of  the  Loire 
and  Garonne.  The  Irish  themselves  served  as 
sailors  and  pilots  in  the  ocean  traffic,  and 
travelled  as  merchants,  tourists,  scholars  and 
pilgrims.  Trading-ships  carried  the  wine  of 
Italy  and  later  of  Provence,  in  great  tuns  in 
which  three  men  could  stand  upright,  to  the 
eastern  and  the  western  coasts,  to  the  Shan- 
non and  the  harbours  of  Down;  and  prob- 
ably brought  tin  to  mix  with  Irish  copper. 
Ireland  sent  out  great  dogs  trained  for  war, 
wool,  hides,  all  kinds  of  skins  and  furs,  and 
perhaps  gold  and  copper.  But  this  material 
trade  was  mainly  important  to  the  Irish  for 
the  other  wealth  that  Gaul  had  to  give  — 
art,  learning,  and  religion. 

Of  art  the  Irish  craftsmen  took  all  that  Gaul 


IRELAND  AND  EUROPE  31 

possessed  —  the  great  decorated  trumpets  of 
bronze  used  in  the  Loire  country,  the  fine 
enamelling  in  colours,  the  late-Celtic  designs 
for  ornaments  of  bronze  and  gold.  Gold- 
smiths travelled  oversea  to  bring  back  brace- 
lets, rings,  draughtboards — "one  half  of  its 
figures  are  yellow  gold,  the  others  are  white 
bronze;  its  woof  is  of  pearl;  it  is  the  wonder 
of  smiths  how  it  was  wrought."  They  bor- 
rowed afterwards  interlaced  ornament  for 
metal  work  and  illuminated  manuscripts.  In 
such  arts  they  outdid  their  teachers;  their 
gold  and  enamel  work  has  never  been  sur- 
passed, and  in  writing  and  illumination  they 
went  beyond  the  imperial  artists  of  Con- 
stantinople. Their  schools  throughout  the 
country  handed  on  a  great  traditional  art, 
not  transitory  or  local,  but  permanent  and 
national. 

Learning  was  as  freely  imported.  The 
Latin  alphabet  came  over  at  a  very  early 
time,  and  knowledge  of  Greek  as  a  living 
tongue  from  Marseilles  and  the  schools  of  Nar- 
bonne.  By  the  same  road  from  Marseilles 
Christianity  must  have  come  a  hundred  years 
or  so  before  the  mission  of  St.  Patrick  —  a 


32  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Christianity  carrying  the  traditions  and  rites 
and  apocalypses  of  the  East.  It  was  from 
Gaul  that  St.  Patrick  afterwards  sailed  for  his 
mission  to  Ireland.  He  came  to  a  land  where 
there  were  already  men  of  erudition  and 
"rhetoricians"  who  scoffed  at  his  lack  of 
education.  The  tribes  of  Ireland,  free  from 
barbarian  invasions  as  they  had  been  free 
from  Roman  armies,  developed  a  culture 
which  was  not  surpassed  in  the  West  or 
even  in  Italy.  And  this  culture,  like  the  art, 
was  national,  spread  over  the  whole  land. 

But  while  the  Irish  drew  to  themselves 
from  the  Empire  art,  learning,  religion,  they 
never  adopted  anything  of  Roman  methods 
of  government  in  church  or  state.  The  Ro- 
man centralized  authority  was  opposed  to 
their  whole  habit  of  thought  and  genius. 
They  made,  therefore,  no  change  in  their  tri- 
bal administration.  As  early  as  the  second 
century  Irishmen  had  learned  from  Gaulish 
landowners  to  divide  land  into  estates  marked 
out  with  pillar-stones  which  could  be  bought 
and  sold,  and  by  700  a.d.  the  country  was 
scored  with  fences,  and  farms  were  freely 
bequeathed  by  will.    But  these  estates  seem 


IRELAND  AND  EUROPE  33 

still  to  have  been  administered  according  to 
the  common  law  of  the  tribe,  and  not  to  have 
followed  the  methods  of  Roman  proprietors 
throughout  the  Empire.  In  the  same  way  the 
foreign  learning  brought  into  Ireland  was 
taught  through  the  tribal  system  of  schools. 
Lay  schools  formed  by  the  Druids  in  old  time 
went  on  as  before,  where  students  of  law  and 
history  and  poetry  grouped  their  huts  round 
the  dwelling  of  a  famous  teacher,  and  the 
poor  among  them  begged  their  bread  in 
the  neighbourhood.  The  monasteries  in  like 
manner  gathered  their  scholars  within  the 
"rath"  or  earthern  entrenchment,  and  taught 
them  Latin,  canon  law,  and  divinity.  Mon- 
astic and  lay  schools  went  on  side  by  side,  as 
heirs  together  of  the  national  tradition  and 
language.  The  most  venerable  saints,  the 
highest  ecclesiastics,  were  revered  also  as 
guardians  of  Irish  history  and  law,  who  wrote 
in  Irish  the  national  tales  as  competent  scribes 
and  not  mere  copyists — men  who  knew  all  the 
traditions,  used  various  sources,  and  shaped 
their  story  with  the  independence  of  learning. 
No  parallel  can  be  found  in  any  other  country 
to  the  writing  down  of  national  epics  in  their 


34  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

pagan  form  many  centuries  after  the  country 
had  become  Christian.  In  the  same  way 
European  culture  was  not  allowed  to  suppress 
the  national  language;  clerics  as  well  as  lay- 
men preserved  the  native  tongue  in  worship 
and  in  hymns,  as  at  Clonmacnois  where  the 
praises  of  St.  Columcille  were  sung,  "some  in 
Latin,  which  was  beguiling,  some  in  Irish,  fair 
the  tale";  and  in  its  famous  cemetery,  where 
kings  and  scholars  and  pilgrims  of  all  Ireland 
came  to  lie,  there  is  but  one  Latin  inscription 
among  over  two  hundred  inscribed  grave  slabs 
that  have  been  saved  from  the  many  lost. 

Like  the  learning  and  the  art,  the  new 
worship  was  adapted  to  tribal  custom. 
Round  the  little  monastic  church  gathered 
a  group  of  huts  with  a  common  refectory, 
the  whole  protected  by  a  great  rampart  of 
earth.  The  plan  was  familiar  to  all  the  Irish; 
every  chief's  house  had  such  a  fence,  and 
every  bardic  school  had  its  circle  of  thatched 
cells  where  the  scholars  spent  years  in  study 
and  meditation.  Monastic  "families"  which 
branched  off  from  the  first  house  were 
grouped  under  the  name  of  the  original 
founder,  in   free  federal  union  like  that  of 


IRELAND  AND  EUROPE  35 

the  clans.  As  no  land  could  be  wholly  alien- 
ated from  the  tribe,  territory  given  to  the 
monastery  was  not  exempted  from  the  com- 
mon law;  it  was  ruled  by  abbots  elected,  like 
kings  and  judges  of  the  tribe,  out  of  the 
house  which  under  tribal  law  had  the  right 
of  succession;  and  the  monks  in  some  cases 
had  to  pay  the  tribal  dues  for  the  land  and 
send  out  fighting  men  for  the  hosting. 

Never  was  a  church  so  truly  national.  The 
words  used  by  the  common  people  were 
steeped  in  its  imagery.  In  their  dedications 
the  Irish  took  no  names  of  foreign  saints,  but 
of  their  own  holy  men.  St.  Bridgit  became 
the  "Mary  of  the  Gael."  There  was  scarcely 
a  boundary  felt  between  the  divine  country 
and  the  earthly,  so  entirely  was  the  spiritual 
life  commingled  with  the  national.  A  legend 
told  that  St.  Colman  one  day  saw  his  monks 
reaping  the  wheat  sorrowfully;  it  was  the 
day  of  the  celebration  of  Telltown  fair,  the 
yearly  assembly  of  all  Ireland  before  the  high- 
king:  he  prayed,  and  angels  came  to  him  at 
once  from  heaven  and  performed  three  races 
for  the  toiling  monks  after  the  manner  of  the 
national  feast. 


36  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

The  religion  which  thus  sprang  out  of  the 
heart  of  a  people  and  penetrated  every  part 
of  their  national  life,  shone  with  a  radiant 
spiritual  fervour.  The  prayers  and  hymns 
that  survive  from  the  early  church  are  in- 
spired by  an  exalted  devotion,  a  profound  and 
original  piety,  which  won  the  veneration  of 
every  people  who  came  into  touch  with  the 
people  of  Ireland.  On  mountain  cliffs,  in 
valleys,  by  the  water-side,  on  secluded 
islands,  lie  ruins  of  their  churches  and  ora- 
tories, small  in  size  though  made  by  masons 
who  could  fit  and  dovetail  into  one  another 
great  stones  from  ten  to  seventeen  feet  in 
length;  the  little  buildings  preserved  for  cen- 
turies some  ancient  tradition  of  apostolic 
measurements,  and  in  their  narrow  and 
austere  dimensions,  and  their  intimate  solem- 
nity, were  fitted  to  the  tribal  communities  and 
to  their  unworldly  and  spiritual  worship.  An 
old  song  tells  of  a  saint  building,  with  a  wet 
cloak  about  him — 


Hand  on  a  stone,  hand  lifted  up, 
Knee  bent  to  set  a  rock, 
Eyes  shedding  tears,  other  lamentation, 
And  mouth  praying." 


IRELAND  AND  EUROPE  37 

Piety  did  not  always  vanquish  the  pas- 
sions of  a  turbulent  age.  There  were  local 
quarrels  and  battles.  In  some  hot  temporal 
controversy,  in  some  passionate  religious 
rivalry,  a  monastic  "rath"  may  have  fallen 
back  to  its  original  use  as  a  fort.  Plunderers 
fell  on  a  trading  centre  like  Clonmacnois, 
where  goods  landed  from  the  Shannon  for 
transport  across  country  offered  a  prize. 
Such  things  have  been  known  in  other  lands. 
But  it  is  evident  that  disturbances  were  not 
universal  or  continuous.  The  extraordinary 
work  of  learning  carried  out  in  the  monastic 
lands,  the  sanctuary  given  in  them  for 
hundreds  of  years  to  innumerable  scholars 
not  of  Ireland  alone,  shows  the  large  peace 
that  must  have  prevailed  on  their  territories. 

The  national  tradition  of  monastic  and  lay 
schools  preserved  to  Erin  what  was  lost  in 
the  rest  of  Europe,  a  learned  class  of  laymen. 
Culture  was  as  frequent  and  honourable  in 
the  Irish  chief  or  warrior  as  in  the  cleric. 
Gaiety  and  wit  were  prized.  Oral  tradition 
told  for  many  centuries  of  a  certain  merry- 
man  long  ago,  and  yet  he  was  a  Christian, 
who  could  make  all  men  he  ever  saw  laugh 


38  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

however  sad  they  were,  so  that  even  his 
skull  on  a  high  stone  in  the  churchyard 
brought  mirth  to  sorrowful  souls. 

We  must  remember,  too,  that  by  the 
Irish  system  certain  forms  of  hostility  were 
absolutely  shut  out.  There  is  not  a  single 
instance  in  Irish  history  of  the  conflicts 
between  a  monastery  and  its  lay  dependents 
which  were  so  frequent  on  the  continent  and 
in  England  —  as,  for  example,  at  St.  Albans, 
where  the  monks  paved  their  church  with  the 
querns  of  the  townsfolk  to  compel  them  to 
bring  their  corn  to  the  abbey  mill.  Again, 
the  broad  tolerance  of  the  church  in  Ireland 
never  allowed  any  persecution  for  religion's 
sake,  and  thus  shut  the  door  on  the  worst 
form  of  human  cruelty.  At  the  invasion  of 
the  Normans  a  Norman  bishop  mocked  to 
the  archbishop  of  Cashel  at  the  imperfec- 
tion of  a  church  like  the  Irish  which  could 
boast  of  no  martyr.  "The  Irish,"  answered 
the  archbishop, "have  never  been  accustomed 
to  stretch  forth  their  hands  against  the 
saints  of  God,  but  now  a  people  is  come  into 
this  country  that  is  accustomed  and  knows 
how  to  make  martyrs.     Now  Ireland  too 


IRELAND  AND  EUROPE  39 

will  have  martyrs."  Finally,  the  Irish  church 
never  became,  as  in  other  lands,  the  servant, 
the  ally,  or  the  master  of  the  state.  It  was 
the  companion  of  the  people,  the  heart  of  the 
nation.  To  its  honour  it  never  served  as  the 
instrument  of  political  dominion,  and  it  never 
was  degraded  from  first  to  last  by  a  war  of 
religion. 

The  free  tribes  of  Ireland  had  therefore  by 
some  native  instinct  of  democratic  life  re- 
jected for  their  country  the  organisation  of 
the  Roman  state,  and  had  only  taken  the 
highest  forms  of  its  art,  learning,  and  reli- 
gion, to  enrich  their  ancient  law  and  tradi- 
tion: and  through  their  own  forms  of  social 
life  they  had  made  this  culture  universal 
among  the  people,  and  national.  Such  was 
the  spectacle  of  liberty  which  the  imperial 
Agricola  had  feared. 


CHAPTER  ni 

THE   IRISH   MISSION 
C.  560-C.  1000 

The  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  brought 
to  the  Irish  people  new  dangers  and  new 
opportunities.  Goths  and  Vandals,  Burgund- 
ians  and  Franks,  poured  west  over  Europe 
to  the  Atlantic  shore,  and  south  across  the 
Mediterranean  to  Africa;  while  the  English 
were  pressing  northward  over  Great  Britain, 
driving  back  the  Celts  and  creating  a  pagan 
and  Teutonic  England.  Once  more  Ireland 
lay  the  last  unconquered  land  of  the  West. 

The  peoples  that  lay  in  a  circle  round  the 
shores  of  the  German  Ocean  were  in  the  thick 
of  human  affairs,  nations  to  right  and  left 
of  them,  all  Europe  to  expand  in.  From  the 
time  when  their  warriors  fell  on  the  Roman 
Empire  they  rejoiced  in  a  thousand  years  of 
uninterrupted  war  and  conquest;  and  for  the 
40 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  41 

thousand  years  that  followed  traders,  now 
from  this  shore  of  the  German  sea  and  now 
from  that,  have  fought  and  trafficked  over 
the  whole  earth. 

In  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand,  we  see  a 
race  of  the  bravest  warriors  that  ever  fought, 
who  had  pushed  on  over  the  Gaulish  sea  to 
the  very  marge  and  limit  of  the  world.  Close 
at  their  back  now  lay  the  German  invaders 
of  Britain — a  new  wave  of  the  human  tide 
always  flowing  westward.  Before  them 
stretched  the  Atlantic,  darkness  and  chaos; 
no  boundary  known  to  that  sea.  Even  now 
as  we  stand  to  the  far  westward  on  the 
gloomy  heights  of  Donegal,  where  the  very 
grass  and  trees  have  a  blacker  hue,  we  seem 
to  have  entered  into  a  vast  antiquity,  where 
it  would  be  little  wonder  to  see  in  the  sombre 
solitude  some  strange  shape  of  the  primeval 
world,  some  huge  form  of  primitive  man's 
imagination.  So  closely  did  Infinity  com- 
pass these  people  round  that  when  the  Irish 
sailor — St.  Brendan  or  another — launched 
his  coracle  on  the  illimitable  waves,  in  face  of 
the  everlasting  storm,  he  might  seem  to  pass 
over  the  edge  of  the  earth  into  the  vast  Eter- 


42  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

nity  where  space  and  time  were  not.  We  see 
the  awful  fascination  of  the  immeasurable 
flood  in  the  story  of  the  three  Irishmen  that 
were  washed  on  the  shores  of  Cornwall  and 
carried  to  King  Alfred.  "They  came," 
^Elfred  tells  us  in  his  chronicle,  "in  a  boat 
without  oars  from  Hibernia,  whence  they  had 
stolen  away  because  for  the  love  of  God  they 
would  be  on  pilgrimage — they  recked  not 
where.  The  boat  in  which  they  fared  was 
wrought  of  three  hides  and  a  half,  and  they 
took  with  them  enough  meat  for  seven  nights." 

Ultimately  withdrawn  from  the  material 
business  of  the  continent  nothing  again 
drew  back  the  Irish  to  any  share  in  the 
affairs  of  Europe  save  a  spiritual  call — a 
call  of  religion,  of  learning,  or  of  liberty. 
The  story  of  the  Irish  mission  shows  how 
they  answered  to  such  a  call. 

The  Teutonic  invaders  stopped  at  the  Irish 
Sea.  At  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  therefore, 
Ireland  did  not  share  in  the  ruin  of  its  civili- 
sation. And  while  all  continental  roads  were 
interupted,  traffic  from  Irish  ports  still 
passed  safely  to  Gaul  over  the  ocean  routes. 
Ireland    therefore    not    only    preserved    her 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  43 

culture  unharmed,  but  the  way  lay  open  for 
her  missionaries  to  carry  back  to  Europe  the 
knowledge  which  she  had  received  from  it.  In 
that  mission  we  may  see  the  strength  and 
the  spirit  of  the  tribal  civilisation. 

Two  great  leaders  of  the  Irish  mission  were 
Columcille  in  Great  Britain  and  Columbanus 
in  Europe.  In  all  Irish  history  there  is  no 
greater  figure  than  St.  Columcille — states- 
man and  patriot,  poet,  scholar,  and  saint. 
After  founding  thirty-seven  monasteries  in 
Ireland,  from  Derry  on  the  northern  coast  to 
Durrow  near  the  Munster  border,  he  crossed 
the  sea  in  563  to  set  up  on  the  bare  island  of 
Hii  or  Iona  a  group  of  reed-thatched  huts 
peopled  with  Irish  monks.  In  that  wild 
debatable  land,  swept  by  heathen  raids,  amid 
the  ruins  of  Christian  settlements,  began  a 
work  equally  astonishing  from  the  religious 
and  the  political  point  of  view.  The  heathen 
Picts  had  marched  westward  to  the  sea,  de- 
stroying the  Celtic  churches.  The  pagan 
English  had  set  up  in  547  a  monarchy  in 
Northumbria  and  the  Lowlands,  threatening 
alike  the  Picts,  the  Irish  or  "Scot"  settle- 
ments along   the   coast,   and    the   Celts  of 


44  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Strathclyde.  Against  this  world  of  war 
Columcille  opposed  the  idea  of  a  peaceful 
federation  of  peoples  in  the  bond  of  Christian 
piety.  He  converted  the  king  of  the  Picts  at 
Inverness  in  565,  and  spread  Irish  monasteries 
from  Strathspey  to  the  Dee,  and  from  the  Dee 
to  the  Tay.  On  the  western  shores  about  Can- 
tyre  he  restored  the  Scot  settlement  from  Ire- 
land which  was  later  to  give  its  name  to 
Scotland,  and  consecrated  as  king  the  Irish 
Aidan,  ancestor  of  the  kings  of  Scotland  and 
England.  He  established  friendship  with  the 
Britons  of  Strathclyde.  From  his  cell  at  Iona 
he  dominated  the  new  federation  of  Picts  and 
Britons  and  Irish  on  both  sides  of  the  sea — 
the  greatest  missionary  that  Ireland  ever  sent 
out  to  proclaim  the  gathering  of  peoples  in 
free  association  through  the  power  of  human 
brotherhood,  learning,  and  religion. 

For  thirty-four  years  Columcille  ruled  as 
abbot  in  Iona,  the  high  leader  of  the  Celtic 
world.  He  watched  the  wooden  ships  with 
great  sails  that  crossed  from  shore  to  shore; 
he  talked  with  mariners  sailing  south  from 
the  Orkneys,  and  others  coming  north  from 
the  Loire  with  their  tuns  of  wine,  who  told 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  45 

him  European  tidings,  and  how  a  town  in 
Istria  had  been  wrecked  by  earthquake.  His 
large  statesmanship,  his  lofty  genius,  the 
passionate  and  poetic  temperament  that  filled 
men  with  awe  and  reverence,  the  splendid 
voice  and  stately  figure  that  seemed  almost 
miraculous  gifts,  the  power  of  inspiring  love 
that  brought  dying  men  to  see  his  face  once 
more  before  they  fell  at  his  feet  in  death,  give 
a  surpassing  dignity  and  beauty  to  his  life. 
"He  could  never  spend  the  space  of  even  one 
hour  without  study  or  prayer  or  writing,  or 
some  other  holy  occupation  .  .  .  and  still  in 
all  these  he  was  beloved  by  all."  "Seasons 
and  storms  he  perceived,  he  harmonised  the 
moon's  race  with  the  branching  sun,  he  was 
skilful  in  the  course  of  the  sea,  he  would  count 
the  stars  of  heaven."  He  desired,  one  of  his 
poems  tells  us,  "to  search  all  the  books  that 
would  be  good  for  any  soul";  and  with  his 
own  hand  he  copied,  it  is  said,  three  hundred 
books,  sitting  with  open  cell  door,  where  the 
brethren,  one  with  his  butcher's  knife,  one 
with  his  milk  pail,  stopped  to  ask  a  blessing 
as  they  passed. 

After  his  death  the  Irish  monks  carried  his 


46  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

work  over  the  whole  of  England.  A  heathen 
land  lay  before  them,  for  the  Roman  mission- 
aries established  in  597  by  Augustine  in 
Canterbury,  speaking  no  English  and  hating 
"barbarism,"  made  little  progress,  and  after 
some  reverses  were  practically  confined  to 
Kent.  The  first  cross  of  the  English  border- 
land was  set  up  in  635  by  men  from  Iona  on 
a  heather  moorland  called  the  Heaven-field, 
by  the  ramparts  of  the  Roman  Wall.  Colum- 
ban  monks  made  a  second  Iona  at  Lindisfarne, 
with  its  church  of  hewn  oak  thatched  with 
reeds  after  Irish  tradition  in  sign  of  poverty 
and  lowliness,  and  with  its  famous  school  of 
art  and  learning.  They  taught  the  English 
writing,  and  gave  them  the  letters  which  were 
used  among  them  till  the  Norman  Conquest. 
Labour  and  learning  went  hand  in  hand. 
From  the  king's  court  nobles  came,  rejoicing 
to  change  the  brutalities  of  war  for  the  plough, 
the  forge-hammer,  the  winnowing  fan:  waste 
places  were  reclaimed,  the  ports  were  crowded 
with  boats,  and  monasteries  gave  shelter  to 
travellers.  For  a  hundred  years  wherever  the 
monks  of  Iona  passed  men  ran  to  be  signed 
by  their  hand  and  blessed  by  their  voice. 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  47 

Their  missionaries  wandered  on  foot  over 
middle  England  and  along  the  eastern  coast 
and  even  touched  the  Channel  in  Sussex.  In 
662  there  was  only  one  bishop  in  the  whole 
of  England  who  was  not  of  Irish  consecration, 
and  this  bishop,  Agilberct  of  Wessex,  was  a 
Frenchman  who  had  been  trained  for  years 
in  Ireland.  The  great  school  of  Malmesbury 
in  Wessex  was  founded  by  an  Irishman,  as 
that  of  Lindisfarne  had  been  in  the  north. 

For  the  first  time  also  Ireland  became 
known  to  Englishmen.  Fleets  of  ships  bore 
students  and  pilgrims,  who  forsook  their  na- 
tive land  for  the  sake  of  divine  studies.  The 
Irish  most  willingly  received  them  all,  sup- 
plying to  them  without  charge  food  and  books 
and  teaching,  welcoming  them  in  every  school 
from  Derry  to  Lismore,  making  for  them  a 
"Saxon  Quarter"  in  the  old  university  of 
Armagh.  Under  the  influence  of  the  Irish 
teachers  the  spirit  of  racial  bitterness  was 
checked,  and  a  new  intercourse  sprang  up 
between  English,  Picts,  .Britons,  and  Irish. 
For  a  moment  it  seemed  as  though  the  British 
islands  were  to  be  drawn  into  one  peaceful 
confederation  and  communion  and  a  common 


48  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

worship  bounded  only  by  the  ocean.  The 
peace  of  Columcille,  the  fellowship  of  learning 
and  of  piety,  rested  on  the  peoples. 

Columcille  had  been  some  dozen  years  in 
Iona  when  Columbanus  (c.  575)  left  Bangor 
on  the  Belfast  Lough,  leading  twelve  Irish 
monks  clad  in  white  homespun,  with  long 
hair  falling  on  their  shoulders,  and  books 
hanging  from  their  waists  in  leathern  satchels. 
They  probably  sailed  in  one  of  the  merchant 
ships  trading  from  the  Loire.  Crossing  Gaul 
to  the  Vosges  Columbanus  founded  his  monas- 
tery of  Luxeuil  among  the  ruined  heaps  of 
a  Roman  city,  once  the  meeting-place  of 
great  highways  from  Italy  and  France,  now 
left  by  the  barbarians  a  wilderness  for  wild 
beasts.  Other  houses  branched  out  into 
France  and  Switzerland.  Finally  he  founded 
his  monastery  of  Bobio  in  the  Apennines, 
where  he  died  in  615. 

A  stern  ascetic,  aflame  with  religious  pas- 
sion, a  finished  scholar  bringing  from  Ireland 
a  knowledge  of  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew,  of 
rhetoric,  geometry,  and  poetry,  and  a  fine 
taste,  Columbanus  battled  for  twenty  years 
with  the  vice  and  ignorance  of  a  half-pagan 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  49 

Burgundy.  Scornful  of  ease,  indifferent  to 
danger,  astonished  at  the  apathy  of  Italy  as 
compared  with  the  zeal  of  Ireland  in  teaching, 
he  argued  and  denounced  with  "the  freedom 
of  speech  which  accords  with  the  custom  of 
my  country."  The  passion  of  his  piety  so 
awed  the  peoples,  that  for  a  time  it  seemed 
as  if  the  rule  of  Columbanus  might  outdo 
that  of  St.  Benedict.  It  was  told  that  in 
Rome  Gregory  the  Great  received  him,  and 
as  Columbanus  lay  prostrate  in  the  church 
the  Pope  praised  God  in  his  heart  for  having 
given  such  great  power  to  so  small  a  man. 
Instantly  the  fiery  saint,  detecting  the  secret 
thought,  rose  from  his  prayer  to  repudiate 
the  slight:  "Brother,  he  who  depreciates  the 
work  depreciates  the  Author." 

For  a  hundred  years  before  Columbanus 
there  had  been  Irish  pilgrims  and  bishops  in 
Gaul  and  Italy.  But  it  was  his  mission  that 
first  brought  the  national  patriotism  of  Ire- 
land into  conflict  with  the  organisation  of 
Rome  in  Europe.  Christianity  had  come  to 
Ireland  from  the  East — tradition  said  from 
St.  John,  who  was  then,  and  is  still,  held  in 
special  veneration  by  the  Irish;    his  flower, 


50  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

St.  John's  wort,  had  for  them  peculiar  virtues, 
and  from  it  came,  it  was  said,  the  saffron  hue 
as  the  national  colour  for  their  dress.  It  was 
a  national  pride  that  their  date  for  celebrating 
Easter,  and  their  Eastern  tonsure  from  ear  to 
ear,  had  come  to  them  from  St.  John.  Peter 
loved  Jesus,  they  said,  but  it  was  John  that 
Jesus  loved — "the  youth  John,  the  foster- 
son  of  his  own  bosom" — "John  of  the 
Breast."  It  was  with  a  very  passion  of 
loyalty  that  they  clung  to  a  national  church 
which  linked  them  to  the  beloved  apostle, 
and  which  was  the  close  bond  of  their  whole 
race,  dear  to  them  as  the  supreme  expression 
of  their  temporal  and  spiritual  freedom,  now 
illustrious  beyond  all  others  in  Europe  for 
the  roll  of  its  saints  and  of  its  scholars,  and 
ennobled  by  the  company  of  its  patriots  and 
the  glory  of  Columcille.  The  tonsure  and 
the  Easter  of  Columbanus,  however,  shocked 
foreign  ecclesiastics  as  contrary  to  the  disci- 
pline of  Rome,  and  he  was  required  to  re- 
nounce them.  He  vehemently  protested  his 
loyalty  to  St.  John,  to  St.  Columcille,  and  to 
the  church  of  his  fathers.  It  was  an  unequal 
argument.    Ireland,  he  was  answered,  was  a 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  51 

small  island  in  a  far  corner  of  the  earth :  what 
was  its  people  that  they  should  fight  against 
the  whole  world.  The  Europe  of  imperial 
tradition  had  lost  comprehension  of  the 
passion  of  national  loyalty:  all  that  lay  out- 
side that  tradition  was  "barbarous,"  the 
Irish  like  the  Saxons  or  the  Huns. 

The  battle  that  was  thus  opened  was  the 
beginning  of  a  new  epoch  in  Irish  history. 
St.  Augustine,  first  archbishop  of  Canterbury 
(597),  was  ordered  (603)  to  demand  obedience 
to  himself  from  the  Celtic  churches  and  the 
setting  aside  of  their  customs.  The  Welsh 
and  the  Irish  refused  to  submit.  Augustine 
had  come  to  them  from  among  the  English, 
who  were  still  pagan,  and  still  fighting  for  the 
extermination  of  the  Celts,  and  on  his  lips 
were  threats  of  slaughter  by  their  armies 
to  the  disobedient.  The  demand  was  renewed 
sixty  years  later,  in  a  synod  at  Whitby  in 
664.  By  that  time  Christianity  had  been 
carried  over  England  by  the  Irish  mission; 
on  the  other  hand,  the  English  were  filled  with 
imperial  dreams  of  conquest  and  supremacy. 
English  kings  settled  on  the  Roman  province 
began  to  imitate  the  glories  of  Rome,  to  have 


52  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

the  Roman  banner  of  purple  and  gold  car- 
ried before  them,  to  hear  the  name  of  "Em- 
peror of  the  whole  of  Britain,"  and  to  project 
the  final  subjugation  to  that  "empire"  of 
the  Celt  and  Pictish  peoples.  The  Roman 
organisation  fell  in  with  their  habits  of 
government  and  their  ambitions.  In  the 
synod  the  tone  of  imperial  contempt  made 
itself  heard  against  those  marked  out  for 
conquest — Celts  "rude  and  barbarous" — 
"  Picts  and  Britons,  accomplices  in  obstinacy 
in  those  two  remote  islands  of  the  world." 
"Your  father  Columba,"  "of  rustic  sim- 
plicity," said  the  English  leader,  had  "that 
Columba  of  yours,"  like  Peter,  the  keeping 
of  the  keys  of  heaven?  With  these  first 
bitter  words,  with  the  condemnation  of  the 
Irish  customs,  and  the  sailing  away  of  the 
Irish  monks  from  Lindisfarne,  discord  began 
to  enter  in.  Slowly  and  with  sorrow  the 
Irish  in  the  course  of  sixty  years  abandoned 
their  traditional  customs  and  adopted  the 
Roman  Easter.  But  the  work  of  Columcille 
was  undone,  and  the  spiritual  bond  by  which 
the  peoples  had  been  united  was  for  ever 
loosened.    English  armies  marched  ravaging 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  53 

over  the  north,  one  of  them  into  Ireland  (684), 
"wasting  that  harmless  nation  which  had 
always  been  most  friendly  to  the  English, 
not  sparing  even  churches  or  monasteries." 
The  gracious  peace  which  had  bound  the 
races  for  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  was 
broken,  and  constant  wars  again  divided 
Picts,  Scots,  Britons,  and  Angles. 

Ireland,  however,  for  four  hundred  years  to 
come  still  poured  out  missionaries  to  Europe. 
They  passed  through  England  to  northern 
France  and  the  Netherlands;  across  the 
Gaulish  sea  and  by  the  Loire  to  middle 
France;  by  the  Rhine  and  the  way  of  Luxeuil 
they  entered  Switzerland;  and  westward  they 
reached  out  to  the  Elbe  and  the  Danube,  send- 
ing missionaries  to  Old  Saxony,  Thuringia, 
Bavaria,  Salzburg  and  Carinthia;  southwards 
they  crossed  the  Alps  into  Italy,  to  Lucca, 
Fiesole,  Rome,  the  hills  of  Naples,  and 
Tarentum.  Their  monasteries  formed  rest- 
houses  for  travellers  through  France  and 
Germany.  Europe  itself  was  too  narrow  for 
their  ardour,  and  they  journeyed  to  Jerusa- 
lem, settled  in  Carthage,  and  sailed  to  the 
discovery  of  Iceland.    No  church  of  any  land 


54  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

has  so  noble  a  record  in  the  astonishing  work 
of  its  teachers,  as  they  wandered  over  the 
ruined  provinces  of  the  empire  among  the 
pagan  tribes  of  the  invaders.  In  the  High- 
lands they  taught  the  Picts  to  compose  hymns 
in  their  own  tongue;  in  a  monastery  founded 
by  them  in  Yorkshire  was  trained  the  first 
English  poet  in  the  new  England;  at  St.  Gall 
they  drew  up  a  Latin-German  dictionary  for 
the  Germans  of  the  Upper  Rhine  and  Switzer- 
land, and  even  devised  new  German  words  to 
express  the  new  ideas  of  Christian  civilisation; 
near  Florence  one  of  their  saints  taught  the 
natives  how  to  turn  the  course  of  a  river. 
Probably  in  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries 
no  one  in  western  Europe  spoke  Greek  who 
was  not  Irish  or  taught  by  an  Irishman.  No 
land  ever  sent  out  such  impassioned  teachers 
of  learning,  and  Charles  the  Great  and  his 
successors  set  them  at  the  head  of  the  chief 
schools  throughout  Europe. 

We  can  only  measure  the  originality  of  the 
Irish  mission  by  comparing  with  it  the  work 
of  other  races.  Roman  civilisation  had  not 
inured  its  people  to  hardship,  nor  given  them 
any  interest  in  barbarians.    When  Augustine 


THE  IRISH  MISSION  55 

in  595  was  sent  on  the  English  mission  he 
turned  back  with  loathing,  and  finally  took 
a  year  for  his  journey.  In  664  no  one  could 
be  found  in  Rome  to  send  to  Canterbury,  till 
in  668  Theodore  was  fetched  from  Syria;  he 
also  took  a  year  on  his  way.  But  the  Irish 
missionaries  feared  nothing,  neither  hunger 
nor  weariness  nor  the  outlaws  of  the  woods. 
Their  succession  never  ceased.  The  death 
of  one  apostle  was  but  the  coming  of  another. 
The  English  missions  again  could  not  compare 
with  the  Irish.  Every  English  missionary 
from  the  seventh  to  the  ninth  century  had 
been  trained  under  Irish  teachers  or  had 
been  for  years  in  Ireland,  enveloped  by  the 
ardour  of  their  fiery  enthusiasm;  when  this 
powerful  influence  was  set  aside  English 
mission  work  died  down  for  a  thousand  years 
or  so.  The  Irish  missionaries  continued  with- 
out a  break  for  over  six  hundred  years. 
Instead  of  the  Irish  zeal  for  the  welfare  of  all 
peoples  whatsoever,  the  English  felt  a  special 
call  to  preach  among  those  "from  whom  the 
English  race  had  its  origin,"  and  their  chief 
mission  was  to  their  own  stock  in  Frisia. 
Finally,    among    Teutonic    peoples    politics 


56  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

went  hand  in  hand  with  Christianity.  The 
Teutons  were  out  to  conquer,  and  in  the  lust 
of  dominion  a  conqueror  might  make  religion 
the  sign  of  obedience,  and  enforce  it  by  fire 
and  water,  viper  and  sword.  But  the  Irish 
had  no  theory  of  dominion  to  push.  A  score 
of  generations  of  missionaries  were  bred  up 
in  the  tribal  communities  of  Ireland,  where 
men  believed  in  voluntary  union  of  men  in 
a  high  tradition.  Their  method  was  one  of 
persuasion  for  spiritual  ends  alone.  The 
conception  of  human  life  that  lay  behind  the 
tribal  government  and  the  tribal  church  of 
Ireland  gave  to  the  Irish  mission  in  Europe 
a  singular  and  lofty  character.  In  the 
broad  humanity  that  was  the  great  dis- 
tinction of  their  people  persecution  had  no 
part.  No  war  of  religion  stained  their  faith, 
and  no  barbarities  to  man. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SCANDINAVIANS   IN   IRELAND 

800-1014 

For  a  thousand  years  no  foreign  host  had 
settled  in  Erin.  But  the  times  of  peace  were 
ended.  About  800  a.d.  the  Irish  suffered  their 
first  invasion. 

The  Teutonic  peoples,  triumphant  con- 
querors of  the  land,  had  carried  their  victories 
over  the  Roman  Empire  to  the  edge  of  the 
seas  that  guarded  Ireland.  But  fresh  hordes 
of  warriors  were  gathering  in  the  north, 
conquerors  of  the  ocean.  The  Scandinavians 
had  sailed  out  on  "the  gulf's  enormous 
abyss,  where  before  their  eyes  the  vanishing 
bounds  of  the  earth  were  hidden  in  gloom." 
An  old  English  riddle  likened  the  shattering 
iceberg  swinging  down  from  Arctic  waters  to 
the  terror  of  the  pirate's  war-ship — the 
leader  on  the  prow  as  it  plunged  through  the 
sea,  calling  to  the  land,  shouting  as  he  goes, 
57 


58  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

with  laughter  terrible  to  the  earth,  swinging 
his  sharp-edged  sword,  grim  in  hate,  eager  for 
slaughter,  bitter  in  the  battle-work.  They 
came,  "great  scourers  of  the  seas — a  nation 
desperate  in  attempting  the  conquest  of 
other  realms." 

The  Scandinavian  campaigns  of  the  ocean 
affected  Ireland  as  no  continental  wars  for 
the  creation  or  the  destruction  of  the  Roman 
Empire  had  done.  During  two  hundred  years 
their  national  life,  their  learning,  their  civilisa- 
tion, were  threatened  by  strangers.  The  social 
order  they  had  built  up  was  confronted  with 
two  new  tests — violence  from  without,  and 
an  alien  population  within  the  island.  We 
may  ask  how  Irish  civilisation  met  the  trial. 

The  Danes  fell  on  all  the  shores  of  Eng- 
land from  the  Forth  to  the  Channel,  the 
land  of  the  Picts  northward,  Iona  and  the 
country  of  the  Scots  to  the  west,  and  Bret- 
land  of  the  Britons  from  the  Clyde  to  the 
Land's  End:  in  Ireland  they  sailed  up  every 
creek,  and  shouldering  their  boats  marched 
from  river  to  river  and  lake  to  lake  into  every 
tribeland,  covering  the  country  with  their 
forts,  plundering  the  rich  men's  raths  of  their 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      59 

cups  and  vessels  and  ornaments  of  gold,  sack- 
ing the  schools  and  monasteries  and  churches, 
and  entering  every  great  king's  grave  for 
buried  treasure.  Their  heavy  iron  swords, 
their  armour,  their  discipline  of  war,  gave 
them  an  overwhelming  advantage  against 
the  Irish  with,  as  they  said,  bodies  and  necks 
and  gentle  heads  defended  only  by  fine  linen. 
Monks  and  scholars  gathered  up  their  manu- 
scripts and  holy  ornaments,  and  fled  away 
for  refuge  to  Europe. 

These  wars  brought  a  very  different  fate 
to  the  English  and  the  Irish.  In  England, 
when  the  Danes  had  planted  a  colony  on  every 
inlet  of  the  sea  (c.  800),  they  took  horse 
and  rode  conquering  over  the  inland  plains. 
They  slew  every  English  king  and  wiped  out 
every  English  royal  house  save  that  of 
Wessex;  and  in  their  place  set  up  their  own 
kings  in  Northumbria  and  East  Anglia,  and 
made  of  all  middle  England  a  vast  "Dane- 
law," a  land  ruled  by  Danish  law,  and  by 
confederations  of  Danish  towns.  At  the 
last  Wessex  itself  was  conquered,  and  a 
Danish  king  ruled  over  all  England  (1013). 
In  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand,  the  invincible 


60  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

power  of  the  tribal  system  for  defence  barred 
the  way  of  invaders.  Every  foot  of  land  was 
defended;  every  tribe  fought  for  its  own  soil. 
There  could  be  no  subjection  of  the  Irish 
clans  except  by  their  extermination.  A  Nor- 
wegian leader,  Thorgils,  made  one  supreme 
effort  at  conquest.  He  fixed  his  capital  at 
Armagh  and  set  up  at  its  shrine  the  worship 
of  Thor,  while  his  wife  gave  her  oracles  from 
the  high  altar  of  Clonmacnois  on  the  Shannon, 
in  the  prophetess's  cloak  set  with  stones  to 
the  hem,  the  necklace  of  glass  beads,  the 
staff,  and  the  great  skin  pouch  of  charms. 
But  in  the  end  Thorgils  was  taken  by  the 
king  of  Meath  and  executed,  being  cast  into 
Loch  Nair.  The  Danes,  who  held  long  and 
secure  possession  of  England,  great  part  of 
Scotland,  and  Normandy,  were  never  able 
to  occupy  permanently  any  part  of  Ireland 
more  than  a  day's  march  from  the  chief 
stations  of  their  fleets.  Through  two  hun- 
dred years  of  war  no  Irish  royal  house  was 
destroyed,  no  kingdom  was  extinguished,  and 
no  national  supremacy  of  the  Danes  replaced 
the  national  supremacy  of  the  Irish. 

The  long  war  was  one  of  "confused  noise 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      61 

and  garments  rolled  in  blood."  Ireland, 
whether  they  could  conquer  it  or  not,  was  of 
vast  importance  to  the  Scandinavians  as  a 
land  of  refuge  for  their  fleets.  Voyagers 
guided  their  way  by  the  flights  of  birds  from 
her  shores ;  the  harbours  of  "  the  great  island  " 
sheltered  them;  her  fields  of  corn,  her  cattle 
driven  to  the  shore  for  the  "strand-hewing," 
provisioned  their  crews;  her  woods  gave 
timber  for  shipbuilding.  Norwegians  and 
Danes  fought  furiously  for  possession  of  the 
sea-ports,  now  against  the  Irish,  now  against 
each  other.  No  victory  or  defeat  counted 
beyond  the  day  among  the  shifting  and  multi- 
plying fleets  of  new  marauders  that  for  ever 
swarmed  round  the  coasts — emigrants  who 
had  flung  themselves  on  the  sea  for  freedom's 
sake  to  save  their  old  laws  and  liberties, 
buccaneers  seeking  "the  spoils  of  the  sea," 
sea-kings  roaming  the  ocean  or  gathering  for 
a  raid  on  Scotland  or  on  France,  stray  com- 
panies out  of  work  or  putting  in  for  a  winter's 
shelter,  boats  of  whale-fishers  and  walrus- 
killers,  Danish  hosts  driven  out  of  England  or 
of  Normandy.  As  "the  sea  vomited  up  floods 
of  foreigners  into  Erin  so  that  there  was  not  a 


62  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

point  without  a  fleet,"  battle  swung  back- 
wards and  forwards  between  old  settlers  and 
new  pirates,  between  Norsemen  and  Danes, 
between  both  and  the  Irish. 

But  the  Scandinavians  were  not  only  sea- 
rovers,  they  were  the  greatest  merchants  that 
northern  Europe  had  yet  seen.  From  the 
time  of  Charles  the  Great  to  William  the 
Conqueror,  the  whole  commerce  of  the  seas 
was  in  their  hands.  Eastward  they  pushed 
across  Russia  to  the  Black  Sea,  and  carried 
back  the  wares  of  Asia  to  the  Baltic;  west- 
ward they  poured  along  the  coasts  of  Gaul  by 
the  narrow  seas,  or  sailed  the  Atlantic  from 
the  Orkneys  and  Hebrides  round  the  Irish 
coast  to  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  The  new-made 
empire  of  Charles  the  Great  was  opening 
Europe  once  more  to  a  settled  life  and  the 
possibilities  of  traffic,  and  the  Danish  mer- 
chants seized  the  beginnings  of  the  new 
trade.  Ireland  lay  in  the  very  centre  of  their 
seaways,  with  its  harbours,  its  wealth,  and 
its  traditional  commerce  with  France.  Mer- 
chants made  settlements  along  the  coasts, 
and  planted  colonies  over  the  inland  country 
to  supply  the  trade  of  the  ports.    They  had 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      63 

come  to  Ireland  for  business,  and  they  wanted 
peace  and  not  war.  They  intermarried  with 
the  Irish,  fostered  their  children,  brought 
their  goods,  welcomed  Irish  poets  into  their 
forts,  listening  to  Irish  stories  and  taking 
new  models  for  their  own  literature,  and  in 
war  they  joined  with  their  Irish  neighbours. 
A  race  of  "Gall-Gaels,"  or  "foreign  Irish," 
grew  up,  accepted  by  the  Irish  as  of  their 
community.  Between  the  two  peoples  there 
was  respect  and  good-will. 

The  enterprise  of  the  sea-rovers  and  the 
merchant  settlers  created  on  Irish  shores 
two  Scandinavian  ' '  kingdoms ' ' — kingdoms 
rather  of  the  sea  than  of  the  land.  The 
Norsemen  set  up  their  moot  on  the  Mound 
over  the  river  Liffey  (near  where  the  Irish 
Parliament  House  rose  in  later  days),  and 
there  created  a  naval  power  which  reached 
along  the  coast  from  Waterford  to  Dundalk. 
The  Dublin  kingdom  was  closely  connected 
with  the  Danish  kingdom  of  Northumbria, 
which  had  its  capital  at  York,  and  formed 
the  common  meeting-ground,  the  link  which 
united  the  Northmen  of  Scandinavia  and  the 
Northmen  of  Ireland.     A  mighty  confedera- 


64  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

tion  grew  up.  Members  of  the  same  house 
were  kings  in  Dublin,  in  Man,  and  in  York. 
The  Irish  Channel  swarmed  with  their  fleets. 
The  sea  was  the  common  highway  which 
linked  the  powers  together,  and  the  sea  was 
held  by  fleets  of  swift  long-ships  with  from 
ninety  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  rowers  or  fight- 
ing men  on  board.  Dublin,  the  rallying-point 
of  roving  marauders,  became  the  centre  of  a 
wide-flung  war.  Its  harbour,  looking  east, 
was  the  mart  of  the  merchant  princes  of  the 
Baltic  trade:  there  men  of  Iceland  and  of 
Norway  landed  with  their  merchandise  or 
their  plunder. 

"Limerick  of  the  swift  ships,"  "Limerick 
of  the  riveted  stones,"  the  kingdom  lying 
on  the  Atlantic  was  a  rival  even  to  Dublin; 
kings  of  the  same  house  ruled  in  Limerick  and 
the  Hebrides,  and  their  fleets  took  the  way 
of  the  wide  ocean;  while  Norse  settlements 
scattered  over  Limerick,  Kerry  and  Tip- 
perary,  organised  as  Irish  clans  and  giving 
an  Irish  form  to  their  names,  maintained  the 
inland  trade.  Other  Munster  harbours  were 
held,  some  by  the  Danes,  some  by  the  Irish. 

The  Irish  were  on  good  terms  with  the 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      65 

traders.  They  learned  to  build  the  new  ships 
invented  by  the  Scandinavians  where  both 
oars  and  sails  were  used,  and  traded  in  their 
own  ports  for  treasures  from  oversea,  silken 
raiment  and  abundance  of  wine.  We  read 
in  900  of  Irishmen  along  the  Cork  shores 
"high  in  beauty,  whose  resolve  is  quiet 
prosperity,"  and  in  950  of  "Munster  of  the 
great  riches,"  "Munster  of  the  swift  ships." 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Irish  never  ceased 
from  war  with  the  sea-kings.  From  the  time 
of  Thorgils,  high-kings  of  Tara  one  after 
another  led  the  perpetual  contest  to  hold 
Ireland  and  to  possess  Dublin.  They  sum- 
moned assemblies  in  north  and  south  of  the 
confederated  chiefs.  The  Irish  copied  not 
only  the  Scandinavian  building  of  war-ships, 
but  their  method  of  raising  a  navy  by  dividing 
the  coast  into  districts,  each  of  which  had  to 
equip  and  man  ten  ships,  to  assemble  at  the 
summons  for  the  united  war-fleet.  Every 
province  seems  to  have  had  its  fleet.  The 
Irish,  in  fact,  learned  their  lesson  so  well  that 
they  were  able  to  undertake  the  re-conquest 
of  their  country,  and  become  leaders  of 
Danish  and  Norse  troops  in  war.    The  spirit 


66  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  the  people  rose  high.  From  900  their 
victories  increased  even  amid  disaster.  Strong 
kings  arose  among  them,  good  organisers  and 
good  fighters,  and  for  a  hundred  years  one 
leader  followed  hard  on  another.  In  916, 
Niall,  king  of  Tara,  celebrated  once  more  the 
assembly  of  Telltown,  and  led  southern  and 
northern  O'Neills  to  the  aid  of  Munster 
against  the  Gentiles,  directing  the  men  of 
Leinster  in  the  campaign — a  gallant  war. 
Murtagh,  king  of  Ailech  or  Tirconnell,  smote 
the  Danes  at  Carlingford  and  Louth  in  926, 
a  year  of  great  danger,  and  so  came  victorious 
to  the  assembly  at  Telltown.  Again,  in  933, 
he  defeated  the  "foreigners"  in  the  north, 
and  they  left  two  hundred  and  forty  heads, 
and  all  their  wealth  of  spoils.  In  941  he  won 
his  famous  name,  "Murtagh  of  the  Leather 
Cloaks,"  from  the  first  midwinter  campaign 
ever  known  in  Ireland,  "the  hosting  of  the 
frost,"  when  he  led  his  army  from  Donegal, 
under  shelter  of  leather  cloaks,  over  lakes  and 
rivers  frozen  by  the  mighty  frost,  round  the 
entire  circuit  of  Ireland.  Some  ten  years 
later,  Cellachan,  king  of  Cashel,  took  up  the 
fight;    with  his  linen-coated  soldiers  against 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      67 

the  mail-clad  foreigners,  he  swept  the  whole 
of  Minister,  capturing  Limerick,  Cork,  Cashel 
and  Waterford,  and  joining  their  Danish 
armies  to  his  own  troops;  till  he  closed  his 
campaign  by  calling  out  the  Munster  fleet 
from  Kinsale  to  Galway  bay,  six  or  seven 
score  of  them,  to  meet  the  Danish  ships  at 
Dundalk.  The  Norsemen  used  armour,  and 
rough  chains  of  blue  iron  to  grapple  the  ene- 
mies' ships,  but  the  Irish  sailors,  with  their 
"strong  enclosures  of  linen  cloth,"  and  tough 
ropes  of  hemp  to  fling  over  the  enemies'  prows, 
came  off  victorious.  According  to  the  saga 
of  his  triumph,  Cellachan  called  the  whole 
of  Ireland  to  share  in  the  struggle  for  Irish 
freedom,  and  a  fleet  from  Ailech  carried  off 
plunder  and  booty  from  the  Hebrides.  He 
was  followed  by  Brian  Boru.  "Ill  luck  was 
it  for  the  Danes  when  Brian  was  born,"  says 
the  old  saga,  "when  he  inflicted  not  evil  on 
the  foreigners  in  the  day  time  he  did  it  in  the 
next  night."  From  beyond  the  Shannon  he 
led  a  fierce  guerrilla  war.  Left  with  but 
fifteen  followers  alive,  sleeping  on  "hard 
knotty  wet  roots,"  he  still  refused  to  yield. 
"It  is  not  hereditary  to  us,"  he  said,  "to 


68  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

submit."  He  became  king  of  Minister  in  974, 
drove  out  the  Danish  king  from  Dublin  in  998, 
and  ruled  at  last  in  1000  as  Ardri  of  Ireland, 
an  old  man  of  sixty  or  seventy  years.  In  1005 
he  called  out  all  the  fleets  of  the  Norsemen 
of  Dublin,  Waterford,  Wexford,  and  of  the 
men  of  Munster,  and  of  almost  all  of  the 
men  of  Erin,  such  of  them  as  were  fit  to 
go  to  sea,  and  they  levied  tribute  from  Sax- 
ons and  Britons  as  far  as  the  Clyde  and 
Argyle. 

A  greater  struggle  still  lay  before  the  Irish. 
Powerful  kings  of  Denmark,  in  the  glory  of 
success,  began  to  think  of  their  imperial 
destiny;  and,  to  round  off  their  states,  pro- 
posed to  create  a  Scandinavian  empire  from 
the  Slavic  shores  of  the  Baltic  across  Den- 
mark, Norway,  England  and  Ireland,  to  the 
rim  of  the  Atlantic,  with  London  as  the 
capital.  King  Sweyn  Forkbeard,  conqueror 
of  all  England,  was  acknowledged  in  1013  its 
king.  But  the  imperial  plan  was  not  yet 
complete.  A  free  Irish  nation  of  men  who 
lived,  as  they  said,  "on  the  ridge  of  the 
world" — a  land  of  unconquered  peoples  of 
the  open  plains  and  the  mountains  and  the 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      69 

sea,  left  the  Scandinavian  empire  with  a 
ragged  edge  out  on  the  line  of  the  Atlantic 
commerce.  King  Cnut  sent  out  his  men  for 
the  last  conquest.  A  vast  host  gathered  in 
Dublin  bay  "from  all  the  west  of  Europe/' 
from  Norway,  the  Baltic  islands,  the  Orkneys, 
Iceland,  for  the  landing  at  Clontarf.  From 
sunrise  to  sunset  the  battle  raged,  the  hair  of 
the  warriors  flying  in  the  wind  as  thick  as  the 
sheaves  floating  in  a  field  of  oats.  The  Scan- 
dinavian scheme  of  a  northern  empire  was 
shattered  on  that  day,  when  with  the  evening 
floodtide  the  remnant  of  the  broken  Danish 
host  put  to  sea.  Brian  Boru,  his  son,  and  his 
grandson  lay  dead.  But  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  to  come  Ireland  kept  its  independ- 
ence. England  was  once  again,  as  in  the  time 
of  the  Roman  dominion,  made  part  of  a  con- 
tinental empire.  Ireland,  as  in  the  days  of 
Rome,  still  lay  outside  the  new  imperial 
system. 

At  the  end,  therefore,  of  two  hundred  years 
of  war,  the  Irish  emerged  with  their  national 
life  unbroken.  Irish  kingdoms  had  lived  on 
side  by  side  with  Danish  kingdoms;  in  spite 
of  the  strength  of  the  Danish  forces,  the  con- 


70  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

stant  irruptions  of  new  Danes,  and  the  busi- 
ness capacity  of  these  fighters  and  traffickers, 
it  was  the  Irish  who  were  steadily  coming 
again  to  the  top.    Through  all  perils  they 
had  kept  their  old  order.    The  high-kings  had 
ruled  without  a  break,  and,  except  in  a  few 
years    of    special    calamity,    had    held    the 
national  assemblies  of  the  country  at  Tell- 
town,  not  far  from  Tara.    The  tribesmen  of 
the  sub -kingdoms,  if  their  ancient  place  of 
assembly  had  been  turned  into  a  Danish  fort, 
held  their  meeting  in   a  hidden  marsh  or 
wood.     Thus  when  Cashel  was  held  by  the 
Norsemen,  the  assembly  met  on  a  mound 
that   rose   in   the   marshy   glen   now   called 
Glanworth.     There   Cellachan,   the  rightful 
heir,  in  the  best  of  arms  and  dress,  demanded 
that   the   nobles    should   remember   justice, 
while  his  mother  declared  his  title  and  recited 
a  poem.    And  when  the  champions  of  Mun- 
ster  heard  these  great  words  and  the  speech 
of  the  woman,  the  tribes  arose  right  readily 
to  make  Cellachan  king.     They  set  up  his 
shout  of  king,  and  gave  thanks  to  the  true 
magnificent  God  for  having  found  him.    The 
nobles   then    came   to    Cellachan    and   put 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      71 

their  hands  in  his  hand,  and  placed  the  royal 
diadem  round  his  head,  and  their  spirits  were 
raised  at  the  grand  sight  of  him. 

Throughout  the  wars,  too,  the  tribes  had 
not  lost  the  tradition  of  learning.  King  Al- 
fred has  recorded  the  state  of  England  after 
the  Danish  wars;  he  could  not  bethink  him 
of  a  single  one  south  of  the  Thames  who 
could  understand  his  ritual  in  English,  or 
translate  aught  out  of  Latin,  and  he  could 
hear  of  very  few  north  of  the  Thames  to  the 
Humber,  and  beyond  the  Humber  scarce  any, 
"so  clean  was  learning  decayed  among  the 
English  folk."  But  the  Irish  had  never 
ceased  to  carry  on  schools,  and  train  men  of 
distinguished  learning.  Clonmacnois  on  the 
Shannon,  for  example,  preserved  a  truly 
Irish  culture,  and  between  its  sackings  trained 
great  scholars  whose  fame  could  reach  to 
King  iElfred  in  Wessex,  and  to  Charles 
the  Great  in  Aachen.  The  Irish  clergy  still 
remained  unequalled  in  culture,  even  in  Italy. 
One  of  them  in  868  was  the  most  learned  of 
the  Latinists  of  all  Europe.  Another,  Cor- 
mac,  king  and  bishop  (f  905),  was  skilled  in 
Old-Irish  literature,  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew, 


72  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Welsh,  Anglo-Saxon  and  Norse — he  might 
be  compared  with  that  other  great  Irishman 
of  his  time,  John  Scotus,  whom  Charles  the 
Bald  had  made  head  of  his  school.  Irish 
teachers  had  a  higher  skill  than  any  others  in 
Europe  in  astronomy,  geography  and  phil- 
osophy. Side  by  side  with  monastic  schools 
the  lay  schools  had  continued  without  a 
break.  By  900  the  lawyers  had  produced  at 
least  eighteen  law-books  whose  names  are 
known,  and  a  glossary.  A  lay  scholar,  prob- 
ably of  the  ninth  century,  compiled  the 
instructions  of  a  king  to  his  son — "Learning 
every  art,  knowledge  of  every  language,  skill 
in  variegated  work,  pleading  with  established 
maxims" — these  are  the  sciences  he  recom- 
mends. The  Triads,  compiled  about  the 
same  time,  count  among  the  ornaments  of 
wisdom,  "abundance  of  knowledge,  a  number 
of  precedents."  Irish  poets,  men  and  women, 
were  the  first  in  Europe  to  sing  of  Nature — 
of  summer  and  winter,  of  the  cuckoo  with 
the  grey  mantle,  the  blackbird's  lay,  the  red 
bracken  and  the  long  hair  of  the  heather,  the 
talk  of  the  rushes,  the  green-barked  yew-tree 
which  supports  the  sky,  the  large  green  of  an 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      73 

oak  fronting  the  storm.  They  sang  of  the 
Creation  and  the  Crucifixion,  when  "dear 
God's  elements  were  afraid";  and  of  pil- 
grimage to  Rome — "the  King  whom  thou 
seekest  here,  unless  thou  bring  Him  with 
thee  thou  dost  not  find";  of  the  hermit's 
"shining  candles  above  the  pure  white 
scriptures  .  .  .  and  I  to  be  sitting  for  a 
while  praying  God  in  every  place";  of  the 
great  fidelities  of  love — "the  flagstone  upon 
which  he  was  wont  to  pray,  she  was  upon  it 
until  she  died.  Her  soul  went  to  heaven. 
And  that  flagstone  was  put  over  her  face." 
They  chanted  the  terror  of  the  time,  the  fierce 
riders  of  the  sea  in  death-conflict  with  the 
mounting  waves:  "Bitter  is  the  conflict  with 
the  tremendous  tempest" — "Bitter  is  the 
wind  to-night.  It  tosses  the  ocean's  white 
hair;  I  do  not  fear  the  fierce  warriors  of 
Norway  coursing  on  the  Irish  sea  to-night." 
And  in  their  own  war  of  deliverance  they 
sang  of  Finn  and  his  Fiana  on  the  battle- 
field, heroes  of  the  Irish  race. 

Even  the  craftsmen's  schools  were  still 
gathered  in  their  raths,  preserving  from 
century  to  century  the  forms  and  rules  of 


74  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

their  art;  soon  after  the  battle  of  Clontarf  we 
read  of  "the  chief  artificer  of  Ireland."  The 
perfection  of  their  art  in  enamel  and  gold 
work  has  been  the  wonder  of  the  old  and  of 
the  modern  world.  Many  influences  had 
come  in — Oriental,  Byzantine,  Scandina- 
vian, French — and  the  Irish  took  and  used 
them  all,  but  their  art  still  remained  Gaelic, 
of  their  native  soil.  No  jeweller's  work  was 
ever  more  perfect  than  the  Ardagh  chalice  of 
the  ninth  or  tenth  century,  of  pure  Celtic  art 
with  no  trace  of  Danish  influence.  The 
metal-workers  of  Munster  must  have  been 
famous,  from  the  title  of  "king  Cellachan  of 
the  lovely  cups";  and  the  golden  case  that 
enclosed  the  Gospel  of  Columcille  in  1000 
was  for  its  splendour  "the  chief  relic  from 
the  western  world."  The  stone- workers,  too, 
carried  on  their  art.  There  were  schools  of 
carvers  eminent  for  skill,  such  as  that  of 
Holy  Island  on  Lough  Derg.  One  of  the 
churches  of  Clonmacnois  may  date  from  the 
ninth  century,  five  others  from  the  tenth; 
finely  sculptured  gravestones  commemorated 
saints  and  scholars;  and  the  high-cross,  a 
monolith  ten  feet  high  set  up  as  a  memorial 


SCANDINAVIANS  IN  IRELAND      75 

to  king  Flann  about  914,  was  carved  by  an 
Irish  artist  who  was  one  of  the  greatest 
sculptors  of  northern  Europe. 

The  temper  of  the  people  was  shown  in 
their  hero-king  Brian  Boru,  warrior  and 
scholar.  His  government  was  with  patience, 
mercy  and  justice.  "King  Brian  thrice  for- 
gave all  his  outlaws  the  same  fault,"  says  a 
Scandinavian  saga,  "but  if  they  misbehaved 
themselves  oftener,  then  he  let  them  be 
judged  by  the  law;  and  from  this  one  may 
mark  what  a  king  he  must  have  been."  "He 
sent  professors  and  masters  to  teach  wisdom 
and  knowledge,  and  to  buy  books  beyond 
the  sea  and  the  great  ocean,  because  the 
writings  and  books  in  every  church  and 
sanctuary  had  been  destroyed  by  the  plun- 
derers; and  Brian  himself  gave  the  price  of 
learning  and  the  price  of  books  to  every  one 
separately  who  went  on  this  service.  Many 
churches  were  built  and  repaired  by  him, 
bridges  and  roads  were  made,  the  fortresses 
of  Munster  were  strengthened." 

Such  was  the  astonishing  vitality  of  learn- 
ing and  art  among  the  Irish.  By  their  social 
system  the  intellectual  treasures  of  the  race 


76  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

had  been  distributed  among  the  whole  people, 
and  committed  to  their  care.  And  the  Irish 
tribes  had  proved  worthy  guardians  of  the 
national  faith.  They  had  known  how  to 
profit  by  the  material  skill  and  knowledge  of 
the  Danes.  Irishmen  were  willing  to  absorb 
the  foreigners,  to  marry  with  them,  and 
even  at  times  to  share  their  wars.  They 
learned  from  them  to  build  ships,  organise 
naval  forces,  advance  in  trade,  and  live  in 
towns;  they  used  the  northern  words  for 
the  parts  of  a  ship,  and  the  streets  of  a  town. 
In  outward  and  material  civilisation  they  ac- 
cepted the  latest  Scandinavian  methods,  just 
as  in  our  days  the  Japanese  accepted  the 
latest  Western  inventions.  But  in  what 
the  Germans  call  culture — in  the  ordering 
of  society  and  law,  of  life  and  thought,  the 
Irish  never  abandoned  their  national  loyalty. 
During  two  centuries  of  Danish  invasions 
and  occupations  the  Gaelic  civilisation  had 
not  given  way  an  inch  to  the  strangers. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   FIRST   IRISH   REVIVAL 
1014-1169 

After  the  battle  of  Clontarf  in  1014  the 
Irish  had  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  com- 
parative quiet.  "A  lively,  stirring,  ancient 
and  victorious  people,"  they  turned  to  repair 
their  hurts  and  to  build  up  their  national  life. 

Throughout  the  Danish  wars  there  had 
been  a  growth  of  industry  and  riches.  No 
people  ever  made  a  successful  national  rally 
unless  they  were  on  the  rising  wave  of  pros- 
perity. It  is  not  misery  and  degradation 
that  bring  success.  Already  Ireland  was 
known  in  France  as  "that  very  wealthy 
country  in  which  there  were  twelve  cities, 
and  wide  bishoprics,  and  a  king,  and  that 
had  its  own  language,  and  Latin  letters." 

But  the  position  of  the  Gaels  was  no  longer 
what  it  had  been  before  the  invasions.  The 
"Foreigners"  called  constantly  for  armed 
77 


78  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

help  from  their  people  without,  and  by  politi- 
cal alliances  and  combinations  fostered  war 
among  the  Irish  states  themselves.  Nearly 
a  hundred  years  after  Clontarf  king  Magnus 
of  Norway  (1103)  led  the  greatest  army  that 
ever  marched  conquering  over  Ireland.  In 
a  dark  fen  the  young  giant  flamed  out  a  mark 
for  all,  with  his  shining  helmet,  his  golden 
hair  falling  long  over  his  red  silken  coat,  his 
red  shield,  and  laid  thereon  a  golden  lion. 
There  he  fell  by  an  Irish  axe.  The  glory  and 
terror  of  "Magnus  of  the  swift  ships,"  "Mag- 
nus of  the  terrible  battles,"  was  sung  in 
Ireland  for  half-a-dozen  centuries  after  that 
last  flaring-up  of  ancient  fires. 

The  national  life,  moreover,  was  now 
threatened  by  the  settlement  of  an  alien  race, 
strangers  to  the  Irish  tradition,  strangers  to 
the  Irish  idea  of  a  state,  and  to  their  feeling 
of  a  church.  The  sea-kings  had  created  in 
Dublin  an  open  gateway  into  Ireland,  a 
gateway  like  Quebec  in  Canada,  that  com- 
manded the  country  and  that  the  country 
could  never  again  close  from  within.  They 
had  filled  the  city  with  Scandinavian  settlers 
from  the  English  and  Welsh  coasts — pioneers 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        79 

of  English  invasion.  A  wealthy  and  compact 
community  living  on  the  seaboard,  trading 
with  all  Europe,  inclined  to  the  views  of  their 
business  clients  in  England  and  the  Empire, 
their  influence  doubled  the  strength  of  the 
European  pressure  on  Ireland  as  against  the 
Gaelic  civilisation. 

To  the  division  of  peoples  within  the  Irish 
state  the  Danes  added  also  the  first  division 
in  the  Irish  church.  Olaf  Cuaran,  overlord 
of  northmen  of  Dublin  and  York,  had  been 
baptized  (943)  in  Northumberland  by  the 
archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  presence  of  the 
English  king.  He  formed  the  first  converted 
Danes  into  a  part  of  the  English  Church,  so 
that  their  bishops  were  sent  to  be  ordained 
at  Canterbury.  Since  the  Irish  in  603  had 
refused  to  deal  with  an  archbishop  of  the 
English,  this  was  the  first  foothold  Canter- 
bury had  got  in  Ireland.  It  was  the  rending 
in  two  of  the  Irish  tradition,  the  degrading 
of  the  primacy  of  Armagh,  the  admission  of 
a  foreign  power,  and  the  triumph  of  the 
English  over  the  Gaelic  church. 

In  church  and  state,  therefore,  the  Danes 
had  brought  the  first  anti-national  element 


80  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

into  Irish  life.  The  change  is  marked  by  a 
change  of  name.  The  Danes  coined  the 
name  "Ire-land"  a  form  of  Eriu  suited  to 
their  own  speech;  the  people  they  called  "Ir- 
ish," leaving  the  name  of  "Scots"  only  to  the 
Gaels  who  had  crossed  the  sea  into  Alban. 
Their  trading  ships  carried  the  words  far  and 
wide,  and  the  old  name  of  Eriu  only  remained 
in  the  speech  of  the  Gaels  themselves. 

Clontarf,  too,  had  marked  ominously  the 
passing  of  an  old  age,  the  beginning  of  a  new. 
Already  the  peoples  round  the  North  Sea — 
Normans,  Germans,  English  —  were  sending 
out  traders  to  take  the  place  of  the  Scandi- 
navians; and  the  peoples  of  the  south — 
Italians  and  Gauls — were  resuming  their 
ancient  commerce.  We  may  see  the  advent 
of  the  new  men  in  the  names  of  adventurers 
that  landed  with  the  Danes  on  that  low  shore 
at  Clontarf  —  the  first  great  drops  of  the 
storm — lords  from  Normandy,  a  Frenchman 
from  Gaul,  and  somewhere  about  that  time 
Walter  the  Englishman,  a  leader  of  merce- 
naries from  England.  In  such  names  we  see 
the  heralds  of  the  coming  change. 

The  Irish  were  therefore  face  to  face  with 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        81 

questions  of  a  new  order  —  how  to  fuse  two 
wholly  different  peoples  into  one  community; 
how  to  make  a  united  church  within  a  united 
nation;  and  how  to  use  foreign  influences 
pouring  in  on  all  sides  so  as  to  enrich  without 
destroying  the  national  life.  Here  was  the 
work  of  the  next  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
Such  problems  have  been  solved  in  other  lands 
by  powerful  kings  at  the  heads  of  armies;  in 
Ireland  it  was  the  work  of  the  whole  com- 
munity of  tribes.  It  is  in  this  effort  that  we 
see  the  immense  vitality  of  the  Gaelic  system 
the  power  of  its  tradition,  and  the  spirit  of 
its  people. 

After  Brian's  death  two  learned  men  were 
set  over  the  government  of  Ireland;  a  lay- 
man, the  Chief  Poet,  and  a  devout  man,  the 
Anchorite  of  all  Ireland.  "The  land  was 
governed  like  a  free  state  and  not  like  a  mon- 
archy by  them."  The  victory  of  Clontarf  was 
celebrated  by  a  renascence  of  learning.  Eye- 
witnesses of  that  great  battle,  poets  and  his- 
torians, wrote  the  chronicle  of  the  Danish 
wars  from  first  to  last,  and  sang  the  glories 
of  Cellachan  and  of  Brian  Boru  in  the  great- 
ness of  his  lif e  and  the  majesty  of  his  death.  A 


82  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

scholar  put  into  Irish  from  Latin  the  "Tale 
of  Troy,"  where  the  exploits  and  battle  rage 
of  the  ancient  heroes  matched  the  martial 
ardour  of  Irish  champions,  and  the  same  words 
are  used  for  the  fights  and  armour  and  ships 
of  the  Trojan  as  of  the  Danish  wars.    Another 
translated  from  Latin  a  history  of  the  Britons, 
the  neighbouring  Celtic  races  across  the  Chan- 
nel.   In  schools  three  or  four  hundred  poetic 
metres  were  taught.    The  glories  of  ancient 
Erin  were  revived.    Poets  wrote  of  Usnech, 
of  Tara,  of  Ailech,  of  the  O'Neills  on  Lough 
Swilly  in  the  far  north,  of  Brian  Boru's  palace 
Kincora  on  the  Shannon,  of  Rath  Cruachan 
of  Connacht.    Tales  of  heroes,  triumphs  of 
ancient  kings,  were  written  in  the  form  in 
which  we  now  know  them,  genealogies  of  the 
tribes  and  old  hymns  of  Irish  saints.    Clerics 
and  laymen  rivalled  one  another  in  zeal.    In 
kings'  courts,  in  monasteries,  in  schools,  an- 
nals of  Ireland  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest 
time  were  composed.    Men  laboured  to  sat- 
isfy the  desire  of  the  Irish  to  possess  a  com- 
plete and  brilliant  picture  of  Ireland  from  all 
antiquity.    The  most  famous  among  the  many 
writers,  one  of  the  most  learned  men  in  all 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        83 

Europe  in  wisdom,  literature,  history,  poetry, 
and  science,  was  Mann  the  layman,  teacher  of 
the  school  of  Monasterboice,  who  died  in  1056 
— "slow  the  bright  eyes  of  his  fine  head,"  ran 
the  old  song.  He  made  for  his  pupils  syn- 
chronisms of  the  kings  of  Asia  and  of  Roman 
emperors  with  Irish  kings,  and  of  the  Irish 
high-kings  and  provincial  chiefs  and  kings  of 
Scotland.  Writings  of  that  time  which  have 
escaped  destruction,  such  as  the  Book  of  Lein- 
ster,  remain  the  most  important  relics  of 
Celtic  literature  in  the   world. 

There  was  already  the  beginning  of  a  uni- 
versity in  the  ancient  school  of  Armagh 
lying  on  the  famous  hill  where  for  long  ages 
the  royal  tombs  of  the  O  'Neills  had  been  pre- 
served. "The  strong  burh  of  Tara  has  died," 
they  said,  "while  Armagh  lives  filled  with 
learned  champions."  It  now  rose  to  a  great 
position.  With  its  three  thousand  scholars, 
famous  for  its  teachers,  under  its  high-ollave 
Gorman  who  spent  twenty-one  years  of  study, 
from  1133  to  1154,  in  England  and  France,  it 
became  in  fact  the  national  university  for  the 
Irish  race  in  Ireland  and  Scotland.  It  was 
appointed  that  every  lector  in  any  church  in 


84  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Ireland  must  take  there  a  degree;  and  in  1169 
the  high-king  Ruaidhri  O 'Conor  gave  the 
first  annual  grant  to  maintain  a  professor  at 
Armagh  "for  all  the  Irish  and  the  Scots." 

A  succession  of  great  bishops  of  Armagh 
laboured  to  bring  about  also  the  organisation 
of  a  national  church  under  the  government  of 
Armagh.  From  1068  they  began  to  make 
visitations  of  the  whole  country,  and  take 
tribute  and  offerings  in  sign  of  the  Armagh 
leadership.  They  journeyed  in  the  old  Irish 
fashion  on  foot,  one  of  them  followed  by  a 
cow  on  whose  milk  he  lived,  all  poor,  without 
servants,  without  money,  wandering  among 
hills  and  remote  hamlets,  stopping  men  on  the 
roadside  to  talk,  praying  for  them  all  night 
by  the  force  only  of  their  piety  and  the  fervour 
of  their  spirit  drawing  all  the  communities 
under  obedience  to  the  see  of  Patrick,  the 
national  saint.  In  a  series  of  synods  from 
1100  to  1157  a  fixed  number  of  bishops'  sees 
was  marked  out,  and  four  archbishoprics 
representing  the  four  provinces.  The  Danish 
sees,  moreover,  were  brought  into  this  union, 
and  made  part  of  the  Irish  organisation. 
Thus  the  power  of  Canterbury  in  Ireland  was 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        85 

ended,  and  a  national  church  set  up  of  Irish 
and  Danes.  Dublin,  the  old  Scandinavian 
kingdom,  whose  prelates  for  over  a  hundred 
years  had  been  consecrated  in  England  (1036- 
1161),  was  the  last  to  hold  out  against  the 
union  of  churches,  till  this  strife  was  healed  by 
St.  Lorcan  ua  Tuathail,  the  first  Irish  bishop 
consecrated  in  Dublin.  He  carried  to  that 
battleground  of  the  peoples  all  the  charity, 
piety,  and  asceticism  of  the  Irish  saint :  feed- 
ing the  poor  daily,  never  himself  tasting  meat, 
rising  at  midnight  to  pray  till  dawn,  and  ever 
before  he  slept  going  out  into  the  graveyard 
to  pray  there  for  the  dead;  from  time  to  time 
withdrawing  among  the  Wicklow  hills  to  St. 
Kevin's  Cave  at  Glendalough,  a  hole  in  the 
cliff  overhanging  the  dark  lake  swept  with 
storm  from  the  mountain-pass,  where  twice  a 
week  bread  and  water  were  brought  him  by  a 
boat  and  a  ladder  up  the  rock.  His  life  was 
spent  in  the  effort  for  national  peace  and 
union,  nor  had  Ireland  a  truer  patriot  or 
wiser  statesman. 

Kings  and  chiefs  sat  with  the  clergy  in  the 
Irish  synods,  and  in  the  state  too  there  were 
signs  of  a  true  union  of  the  peoples.     The 


86  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Danes,  gradually  absorbed  into  the  Irish  pop- 
ulation, lost  the  sense  of  separate  nationality. 
The  growing  union  of  the  peoples  was  seen  in 
the  increasing  power  of  the  Ardri.  Brian's 
line  maintained  at  Cachel  the  title  of  "kings 
of  Ireland,"  strengthening  their  house  with 
Danish  marriages;  they  led  Danish  forces  and 
were  elected  kings  of  the  Danes  in  Dublin. 
But  in  the  twelfth  century  it  was  the  Con- 
nacht  kings  who  came  to  the  front,  the  same 
race  that  a  thousand  years  before  had  spread 
their  power  across  the  Shannon  to  Usnech  and 
to  Tara.  Turlough  O'Conor  (1118-1156)  was 
known  to  Henry  I  of  England  as  "king  of 
Ireland";  on  a  metal  cross  made  for  him  he 
is  styled  "king  of  Erin,"  and  a  missal  of  his 
time  (1150)  contains  the  only  prayer  yet 
known  for  "the  king  of  the  Irish  and  his 
army"  —  the  sign,  as  we  may  see,  of  foreign 
influences  on  the  Irish  mind.  His  son,  Ruai- 
dhri  or  Rory,  was  proclaimed  (1166)  Ardri  in 
Dublin  with  greater  pomp  than  any  king  be- 
fore him,  and  held  at  Athboy  in  Meath  an 
assembly  of  the  "men  of  Ireland,"  arch- 
bishops and  clergy,  princes  and  nobles,  eigh- 
teen thousand  horsemen  from  the  tribes  and 


THE  FIKST  IRISH  REVIVAL        87 

provinces,  and  a  thousand  Danes  from  Dub- 
lin— there  laws  were  made  for  the  honour  of 
churches  and  clergy,  the  restoring  of  prey  un- 
justly taken,  and  the  control  of  tribes  and 
territories,  so  that  a  woman  might  traverse 
the  land  in  safety;  and  the  vast  gathering 
broke  up  "in  peace  and  amity,  without  battle 
or  controversy,  or  any  one  complaining  of  an- 
other at  that  meeting."  It  is  said  that  Rory 
O'Conor's  procession  when  he  held  the  last  of 
the  national  festivals  at  Telltown  was  several 
miles  in  length. 

The  whole  of  Ireland  is  covered  with  the 
traces  of  this  great  national  revival.  We  may 
still  see  on  islands,  along  river-valleys,  in 
lonely  fields,  innumerable  ruins  of  churches 
built  of  stone  chiselled  as  finely  as  man's  hand 
can  cut  it;  and  of  the  lofty  round  towers  and 
sculptured  high  crosses  that  were  multiplied 
over  the  land  after  the  day  of  Clontarf .  The 
number  of  the  churches  has  not  been  counted. 
It  must  be  astonishing.  At  first  they  were 
built  in  the  "Romanesque"  style  brought 
from  the  continent,  with  plain  round  arches, 
as  Brian  Boru  made  them  about  a.d.  1000; 
presently  chancels  were  added,  and  doors  and 


88  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

windows  and  arches  richly  carved.  These 
churches  were  still  small,  intimate,  suited  to 
the  worship  of  the  tribal  communities;  as 
time  went  on  they  were  larger  and  more  richly 
decorated,  but  always  marked  with  the  re- 
membrance of  Irish  tradition  and  ornament, 
and  signed  by  Irish  masons  on  the  stones. 
There  was  a  wealth  of  metal  work  of  great 
splendour,  decorated  with  freedom  and  bold- 
ness of  design,  with  inlaid  work  and  filigree, 
and  settings  of  stones  and  enamels  and  crys- 
tal; as  we  may  see  in  book-shrines,  in  the 
crosiers  of  Lismore  and  Cachel  and  Clonmac- 
nois  and  many  others,  in  the  matchless  pro- 
cessional cross  of  Cong,  in  the  great  shrine  of 
St.  Manchan  with  twenty-four  figures  highly 
raised  on  each  side  in  a  variety  of  postures 
remarkable  for  the  time.  It  was  covered  with 
an  embroidery  of  gold  in  as  good  style,  say 
the  Annals,  as  a  reliquary  was  ever  covered 
in  Ireland.  Irish  skill  was  known  abroad.  A 
French  hero  of  romance  wore  a  fine  belt  of 
Irish  leather- work,  and  a  knight  of  Bavaria 
had  from  Ireland  ribbon  of  gold-lace  em- 
broidered with  animals  in  red  gold. 

The  vigour  of  Irish  life  overflowed,  indeed, 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        89 

the  bounds  of  the  country.  Cloth  from 
Ireland  was  already  sold  in  England  and  it 
was  soon  to  spread  over  all  Europe.  It  is 
probable  that  export  of  corn  and  provisions 
had  already  begun,  and  of  timber,  besides 
hides  and  wool.  And  the  frequent  mention 
of  costly  gifts  and  tributes,  and  of  surprisingly 
large  sums  of  gold  and  silver  show  a  country 
of  steadily  expanding  wealth.  From  the  time 
of  Brian  Boru  learned  men  poured  over  the 
continent.  Pilgrims  journeyed  to  Compos- 
tella,  to  Rome,  or  through  Greece  to  Jordan 
and  Jerusalem — composing  poems  on  the 
way,  making  discourses  in  Latin,  showing 
their  fine  art  of  writing.  John,  bishop  of 
Mecklenburg,  preached  to  the  Vandals  be- 
tween the  Elbe  and  the  Vistula;  Marianus 
"the  Scot"  on  his  pilgrimage  to  Rome  stopped 
at  Regensburg  on  the  Danube,  and  founded 
there  a  monastery  of  north  Irishmen  in  1068, 
to  which  was  soon  added  a  second  house  for 
south  Irishmen.  Out  of  these  grew  the 
twelve  Irish  convents  of  Germany  and  Aus- 
tria. An  Irish  abbot  was  head  of  a  monastery 
in  Bulgaria.  From  time  to  time  the  Irish 
came  home  to  collect  money  for  their  founda- 


90  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

tions  and  went  back  laden  with  gold  from  the 
kings  at  home.  Pope  Adrian  IV  (1154)  re- 
membered with  esteem  the  Irish  professor 
under  whom  he  had  studied  in  Paris  Univer- 
sity. Irishmen  were  chaplains  of  the  emperor 
Conrad  III  (fll52)  and  of  his  successor 
Frederick  Barbarossa.  Strangers  "moved  by 
the  love  of  study"  still  set  out  "in  imitation  of 
their  ancestors  to  visit  the  land  of  the  Irish 
so  wonderfully  celebrated  for  its  learning." 

While  the  spirit  of  Ireland  manifested  itself 
in  the  shaping  of  a  national  university,  and  of 
a  national  church,  in  the  revival  of  the  glories 
of  the  Ardri,  and  in  vigour  of  art  and  learn- 
ing, there  was  an  outburst  too  among  the 
common  folk  of  jubilant  patriotism.  We  can 
hear  the  passionate  voice  of  the  people  in  the 
songs  and  legends,  the  prophecies  of  the  en- 
during life  of  Irishmen  on  Irish  land,  the 
popular  tales  that  began  at  this  time  to  run 
from  mouth  to  mouth.  They  took  to  them- 
selves two  heroes  to  be  centres  of  the  national 
hope — Finn  the  champion,  leader  of  the 
"Fiana,"  the  war-bands  of  old  time;  and 
Patrick  the  saint.  A  multitude  of  tales  sud- 
denly sprang  up  of  the  adventures  of  Finn — 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        91 

the  warrior  worthy  of  a  king,  the  son  of  wis- 
dom, the  mighty  hunter  of  every  mountain 
and  forest  in  Ireland,  whose  death  no  minstrel 
cared  to  sing.  Every  poet  was  expected  to 
recite  the  fame  in  life  of  Finn  and  his  com- 
panions. Pedigrees  were  invented  to  link  him 
with  every  great  house  in  Ireland,  for  their 
greater  glory  and  authority.  Side  by  side  with 
Finn  the  people  set  St.  Patrick — keeper  of 
Ireland  against  all  strangers,  guardian  of 
their  nation  and  tradition.  It  was  Patrick, 
they  told,  who  by  invincible  prayer  and  fast- 
ing at  last  compelled  Heaven  to  grant  that 
outlanders  should  not  for  ever  inhabit  Erin; 
"that  the  Saxons  should  not  dwell  in  Ireland, 
by  consent  or  perforce,  so  long  as  I  abide  in 
heaven:"  "Thou  shalt  have  this,"  said  the 
outwearied  angel.  "Around  thee,"  was  the 
triumphant  Irish  hope,  "on  the  Day  of 
Judgment  the  men  of  Erin  shall  come  to 
judgment";  for  after  the  twelve  thrones  of 
the  apostles  were  set  in  Judsea  to  judge  the 
tribes  of  Israel,  Patrick  himself  should  at  the 
end  arise  and  call  the  people  of  Ireland  to  be 
judged  by  him  on  a  mountain  in  their  own 
land. 


92  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

As  in  the  old  Gaelic  tradition,  so  now  the 
people  fused  in  a  single  emotion  the  nation 
and  the  church.  They  brought  from  dusky 
woods  the  last  gaunt  relics  of  Finn's  company, 
sad  and  dispirited  at  the  falling  of  the  evening 
clouds,  and  set  them  face  to  face  with  Patrick 
as  he  chanted  mass  on  one  of  their  old  raths 
— men  twice  as  tall  as  the  modern  folk,  with 
their  huge  wolf-dogs,  men  "who  were  not  of 
our  epoch  or  of  one  time  with  the  clergy." 
When  Patrick  hesitated  to  hear  their  pagan 
memories  of  Ireland  and  its  graves,  of  its  men 
who  died  for  honour,  of  its  war  and  hunting, 
its  silver  bridles  and  cups  of  yellow  gold,  its 
music  and  great  feastings,  lest  such  recreation 
of  spirit  and  mind  should  be  to  him  a  destruc- 
tion of  devotion  and  dereliction  of  prayer, 
angels  were  sent  to  direct  him  to  give  ear  to 
the  ancient  stories  of  Ireland,  and  write  them 
down  for  the  joy  of  companies  and  nobles  of 
the  latter  time.  "Victory  and  blessing  wait 
on  thee,  Caeilte,"  said  Patrick,  thus  called  to 
the  national  service;  "for  the  future  thy 
stories  and  thyself  are  dear  to  me";  "grand 
lore  and  knowledge  is  this  thou  hast  uttered 
to  us."    "Thou  too,  Patrick,  hast  taught  us 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        93 

good  things,"  the  warriors  responded  with 
courteous  dignity.  So  at  all  the  holy  places 
of  Ireland,  the  pillar-stone  of  ancient  Usnech, 
the  ruined  mounds  of  Tara,  great  Rath-Crua- 
chan  of  Connacht,  the  graves  of  mighty 
champions,  Pagan  hero  and  Christian  saint 
sat  together  to  make  interchange  of  history 
and  religion,  the  teaching  of  the  past  and  the 
promise  of  the  future.  St.  Patrick  gave  his 
blessing  to  minstrels  and  story-tellers  and 
to  all  craftsmen  of  Ireland — "and  to  them  that 
profess  it  be  it  all  happiness."  He  mounted 
to  the  high  glen  to  see  the  Fiana  raise  their 
warning  signal  of  heroic  chase  and  hunting. 
He  saw  the  heavy  tears  of  the  last  of  the 
heroes  till  his  very  breast,  his  chest  was  wet. 
He  laid  in  his  bosom  the  head  of  the  pagan 
hunter  and  warrior:  "By  me  to  thee,"  said 
Patrick,  "and  whatsoever  be  the  place  in 
which  God  shall  lay  hand  on  thee,  Heaven 
is  assigned."  "For  thy  sake,"  said  the 
saint,  "be  thy  lord  Finn  mac  Cumhall  taken 
out  of  torment,  if  it  be  good  in  the  sight  of 
God." 

In  no  other  country  did  such  a  fate  befall 
a  missionary  coming  from  strangers — to  be 


94  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

taken  and  clothed  upon  with  the  national 
passion  of  a  people,  shaped  after  the  pattern 
of  their  spirit,  made  the  keeper  of  the  nation's 
soul,  the  guardian  of  its  whole  tradition. 
Such  legends  show  how  enthusiasm  for  the 
common  country  ran  through  every  hamlet 
in  the  land,  and  touched  the  poorest  as  it  did 
the  most  learned.  They  show  that  the  social 
order  in  Ireland  after  the  Danish  settlements 
was  the  triumph  of  an  Irish  and  not  a  Danish 
civilisation.  The  national  life  of  the  Irish, 
free,  democratic,  embracing  every  emotion 
of  the  whole  people,  gentle  or  simple,  was 
powerful  enough  to  gather  into  it  the  strong 
and  freedom-loving  rovers  of  the  sea. 

On  all  sides,  therefore,  we  see  the  growth  of 
a  people  compacted  of  Irish  and  Danes, 
bound  together  under  the  old  Irish  law  and 
social  order,  with  Dublin  as  a  centre  of  the 
united  races,  Armagh  a  national  university, 
a  single  and  independent  church  under  an 
Irish  primate  of  Armagh  and  an  Irish  arch- 
bishop of  Dublin,  a  high-king  calling  the 
people  together  in  a  succession  of  national 
assemblies  for  the  common  good  of  the 
country.   The  new  union  of  Ireland  was  being 


THE  FIRST  IRISH  REVIVAL        95 

slowly  worked  out  by  her  political  council- 
lors, her  great  ecclesiastics,  her  scholars  and 
philosophers,  and  by  the  faith  of  the  common 
people  in  the  glory  of  their  national  inherit- 
ance. "The  bodies  and  minds  of  the  people 
were  endued  with  extraordinary  abilities  of 
nature,"  so  that  art,  learning  and  commerce 
prospered  in  their  hands.  On  this  fair  hope 
of  rising  civilisation  there  fell  a  new  and 
tremendous  trial. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  NORMAN   INVASION 

1169-1520 

After  the  fall  of  the  Danes  the  Normans, 
conquerors  of  England,  entered  on  the  domin- 
ion of  the  sea  —  "citizens  of  the  world,"  they 
carried  their  arms  and  their  cunning  from 
the  Tweed  to  the  Mediterranean,  from  the 
Seine  to  the  Euphrates.  The  spirit  of  con- 
quest was  in  the  air.  Every  landless  man 
was  looking  to  make  his  fortune.  Every 
baron  desired,  like  his  viking  forefathers,  a 
land  where  he  could  live  out  of  reach  of  the 
king's  long  arm.  They  had  marked  out 
Ireland  as  their  natural  prey — "a  land  very 
rich  in  plunder,  and  famed  for  the  good 
temperature  of  the  air,  the  fruitfulness  of 
the  soil,  the  pleasant  and  commodious  seats 
for  habitation,  and  safe  and  large  ports  and 
havens  lying  open  for  traffic."  Norman 
96 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION  97 

barons  were  among  the  enemy  at  the  battle 
of  Clontarf  in  1014.  The  same  year  that 
Ireland  saw  the  last  of  the  Scandinavian 
sea  kings  (1103)  she  saw  the  first  of  the 
Norman  invaders  prying  out  the  country 
for  a  kingdom.  William  Rufus  (1087-1100) 
had  fetched  from  Ireland  great  oaks  to  roof 
his  Hall  at  Westminster,  and  planned  the 
conquest  of  an  island  so  desirable.  A  greater 
empire-maker,  Henry  II,  lord  of  a  vast  sea- 
coast  from  the  Forth  to  the  Pyrenees,  hold- 
ing both  sides  of  the  Channel,  needed  Ireland 
to  round  off  his  dominions  and  give  him 
command  of  the  traffic  from  his  English  ports 
across  the  Irish  Sea,  from  his  ports  of  the 
Loire  and  the  Garonne  over  the  Gaulish  sea. 
The  trade  was  well  worth  the  venture. 

Norman  and  French  barons,  with  Welsh  fol- 
lowers, and  Flemings  from  Pembroke,  led  the 
invasion  that  began  in  1169.  They  were  men 
trained  to  war,  with  armour  and  weapons  un- 
known to  the  Irish.  But  they  owed  no  small 
part  of  their  military  successes  in  Ireland  to  a 
policy  of  craft.  If  the  Irish  fought  hard  to 
defend  the  lands  they  held  in  civil  tenure, 
the  churches  had  no  great  strength,  and  the 


98  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

seizing  of  a  church  estate  led  to  no  immediate 
rising  out  of  the  country.  The  settled  plan 
of  the  Normans,  therefore,  was  to  descend  on 
defenceless  church  lands,  and  turn  them 
into  Norman  strongholds;  in  reply  to  com- 
plaints, they  pleaded  that  the  churches  were 
used  by  the  hostile  Irish  as  storing  places 
for  their  goods.  Their  occupation  gave  the 
Normans  a  great  military  advantage,  for 
once  the  churches  were  fortified  and  gar- 
risoned with  Norman  skill  the  reduction  of 
the  surrounding  country  became  much  easier. 
The  Irish  during  this  period  sometimes 
plundered  church  lands,  but  did  not  occupy, 
annex,  or  fortify  them.  The  invaders  mean- 
while spread  over  the  country.  French  and 
Welsh  and  Flemings  have  left  their  mark 
in  every  part  of  Ireland,  by  Christian  names, 
by  names  of  places  and  families,  and  by  loan- 
words taken  into  Irish  from  the  French. 
The  English  who  came  over  went  chiefly  to 
the  towns,  many  of  them  to  Dublin  through 
the  Bristol  trade.  Henry  II  himself  crossed 
in  1171  with  a  great  fleet  and  army  to  over- 
awe his  too-independent  barons  as  well  as 
the  Irish,  and  from  the  wooden  palace  set 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION  99 

up  for  him  in  Dublin  demanded  a  general 
oath  of  allegiance.  The  Normans  took  the 
oath,  with  some  churchmen  and  half-a-dozen 
Irish  chiefs. 

In  Henry's  view  this  oath  was  a  confession 
that  the  Irish  knew  themselves  conquered; 
and  that  the  chief  renounced  the  tribal 
system,  and  handed  over  the  land  to  the  king, 
so  that  he  as  supreme  lord  of  all  the  soil 
could  allot  it  to  his  barons,  and  demand 
in  return  the  feudal  services  common  in 
Normandy  or  in  England.  No  Irish  chief, 
however,  could  have  even  understood  these 
ideas.  He  knew  nothing  of  the  feudal  system, 
nor  of  a  landlord  in  the  English  sense.  He 
had  no  power  to  hand  the  land  of  the  tribe 
over  to  any  one.  He  could  admit  no  "con- 
quest," for  the  seizing  of  a  few  towns  and 
forts  could  not  carry  the  subjection  of  all  the 
independent  chiefdoms.  Whatever  Henry's 
theory  might  be,  the  taking  of  Dublin  was 
not  the  taking  of  an  Irish  capital :  the  people 
had  seen  its  founding  as  the  centre  of  a 
foreign  kingdom,  and  their  own  free  life  had 
continued  as  of  old.  Henry's  presence  there 
gave  him  no  lordship:   and  the  independent 


100  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

temper  of  the  Irish  people  was  not  likely, 
after  their  Danish  experience,  to  be  cowed 
by  two  years  of  war.  Some  cunning  explana- 
tion of  the  oath  was  given  to  the  Irish  chiefs 
by  the  subtle  Angevin  king  and  his  crafty 
Norman  counsellors — that  war  was  to  cease, 
that  they  were  to  rule  as  fully  and  freely 
as  before,  and  in  recognition  of  the  peace 
to  give  to  Henry  a  formal  tribute  which  im- 
plied no  dominion. 

The  false  display  at  Dublin  was  a  deception 
both  to  the  king  and  to  the  Irish.  The 
empty  words  on  either  side  did  not  check 
for  a  month  the  lust  of  conquest  nor  the 
passion  of  defence. 

One  royal  object,  however,  was  made  good. 
The  oath,  claimed  under  false  pretences, 
yielded  under  misunderstanding,  impossible 
of  fulfilment,  was  used  to  confer  on  the  king 
a  technical  legal  right  to  Ireland;  this  legal 
fiction  became  the  basis  of  the  royal  claims, 
and  the  justification  of  every  later  act  of 
violence. 

Another  fraud  was  added  by  the  proclama- 
tion of  papal  bulls,  which  according  to  modern 
research  seem  to  have  been  mere  forgeries. 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION         101 

They  gave  the  lordship  of  the  country  to 
Henry,  and  were  readily  accepted  by  the 
invaders  and  their  successors.  But  they  were 
held  of  no  account  among  Irish  annalists 
and  writers,  who  make  no  mention  of  the 
bulls  during  the  next  three  hundred  years. 

Thus  the  grounds  of  the  English  title  to 
Ireland  were  laid  down,  and  it  only  remained 
to  make  good  by  the  sword  the  fictions  of 
law  and  the  falsehoods  of  forgers.  According 
to  these  Ireland  had  been  by  the  act  of  the 
natives  and  by  the  will  of  God  conferred  on 
a  higher  race.  Kings  carved  out  estates  for 
their  nobles.  The  nobles  had  to  conquer 
the  territories  granted  them.  Each  con- 
quered tract  was  to  be  made  into  a  little 
England,  enclosed  within  itself,  and  sharply 
fenced  off  from  the  supposed  sea  of  savagery 
around  it.  There  was  to  be  no  trade  with  the 
Irish,  no  intercourse,  no  relationship,  no  use 
of  their  dress,  speech,  or  laws,  no  dealings 
save  those  of  conquest  and  slaughter.  The 
colonists  were  to  form  an  English  parliament 
to  enact  English  law.  A  lieutenant-governor, 
or  his  deputy,  was  set  in  Dublin  Castle  to 
superintend  the  conquest  and  the  adminis- 


102  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

tration.  The  fighting  garrison  was  rein- 
forced by  the  planting  of  a  militant  church 
— bishops  and  clergy  of  foreign  blood,  stout 
men  of  war,  ready  to  aid  by  prayers,  excom- 
munications, and  the  sword.  A  bishop  of 
Waterford  being  once  sent  by  the  Lord 
Justice  to  account  to  Edward  I  for  a  battle 
of  the  Irish  in  which  the  king  of  Connacht 
and  two  thousand  of  his  men  lay  dead,  ex- 
plained that  "in  policy  he  thought  it  ex- 
pedient to  wink  at  one  knave  cutting  off 
another,  and  that  would  save  the  king's 
coffers  and  purchase  peace  to  the  land"; 
whereat  the  king  smiled  and  bade  him  return 
to  Ireland. 

The  Irish  were  now  therefore  aliens  in 
their  own  country.  Officially  they  did  not 
exist.  Their  land  had  been  parted  out  by 
kings  among  their  barons  "till  in  title  they 
were  owners  and  lords  of  all,  so  as  nothing 
was  left  to  be  granted  to  the  natives."  Dur- 
ing centuries  of  English  occupation  not  a 
single  law  was  enacted  for  their  relief  or 
benefit.  They  were  refused  the  protection 
of  English  law,  shut  out  from  the  king's 
courts  and  from  the  king's  peace.    The  people 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION         103 

who  had  carried  the  peaceful  mission  of  a 
spiritual  religion  over  England  and  Europe 
now  saw  that  other  mission  planted  among 
themselves — a  political  church  bearing  the 
sword  of  the  conqueror,  and  dealing  out 
anathemas  and  death  in  the  service  of  a  state 
which  rewarded  it  with  temporal  wealth  and 
dominion. 

The  English  attack  was  thus  wholly  differ- 
ent from  that  of  the  Danes:  it  was  guided 
by  a  fixed  purpose,  and  directed  by  kings 
who  had  a  more  absolute  power,  a  more 
compact  body  of  soldiers,  and  a  better  filled 
treasury  than  any  other  rulers  in  Europe. 
Dublin,  no  mere  centre  now  of  roving  sea- 
kings,  was  turned  into  an  impregnable  for- 
tress, fed  from  the  sea,  and  held  by  a  garrison 
which  was  supported  by  the  whole  strength 
of  England — a  fortress  unconquerable  by 
any  power  within  Ireland — a  passage  through 
which  the  strangers  could  enter  at  their  ease. 
The  settlers  were  no  longer  left  to  lapse  as 
isolated  groups  into  Irish  life,  but  were  linked 
together  as  a  compact  garrison  under  the 
Castle  government.  The  vigilance  of  West- 
minster never  ceased,  nor  the  supply  of  its 


104  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

treasure,  its  favoured  colonists,  and  its  ablest 
generals.  From  Henry  II  to  Elizabeth,  the 
aim  of  the  English  government  was  the  same. 
The  ground  of  Ireland  was  to  be  an  immediate 
holding,  "a  royal  inheritance,"  of  the  king. 
On  an  issue  so  sharp  and  definite  no  com- 
promise was  possible.  So  long  as  the  Irish 
claimed  to  hold  a  foot  of  their  own  land  the 
war  must  continue.  It  lasted,  in  fact,  for 
five  hundred  years,  and  at  no  moment  was 
any  peace  possible  to  the  Irish  except  by 
entire  renunciation  of  their  right  to  the  actual 
soil  of  their  country.  If  at  times  dealings 
were  opened  by  the  English  with  an  Irish 
chief,  or  a  heavy  sum  taken  to  allow  him  to 
stay  on  his  land,  this  was  no  more  than  a 
temporary  stratagem  or  a  local  expedient, 
and  in  no  way  affected  the  fixed  intention 
to  gain  the  ownership  of  the  soil. 

Out  of  the  first  tumult  and  anarchy  of  war 
an  Ireland  emerged  which  was  roughly  divided 
between  the  two  peoples.  In  Ulster,  O'Neills 
and  O'Donnells  and  other  tribes  remained, 
with  only  a  fringe  of  Normans  on  the  coast. 
O' Conors  and  other  Irish  clans  divided  Con- 
nacht,    and    absorbed    into    the    Gaelic    life 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION         105 

the  incoming  Norman  de  Burghs.  The  Anglo- 
Normans,  on  the  other  hand,  established 
themselves  powerfully  in  Munster  and  Lein- 
ster.  But  even  here — side  by  side  with  the 
great  lords  of  the  invasion,  earls  of  Ormond, 
and  Desmond,  and  Kildare — there  remained 
Irish  kingdoms  and  the  remnants  of  old  chief  - 
doms,  unconquered,  resolute  and  wealthy — 
such  as  the  O'Briens  in  the  west,  MacCarthys 
and  O'Sullivans  in  the  south,  O'Conors  and 
O'Mores  in  the  middle  country,  MacMur- 
roughs  and  O'Tooles  in  Leinster,  and  many 
more. 

It  has  been  held  that  all  later  misfortunes 
would  have  been  averted  if  the  English 
without  faltering  had  carried  out  a  complete 
conquest,  and  ended  the  dispute  once  for  all. 
English  kings  had,  indeed,  every  temptation 
to  this  direct  course.  The  wealth  of  the 
country  lay  spread  before  them.  It  was  a 
land  abounding  in  corn  and  cattle,  in  fish, 
in  timber;  its  manufactures  were  famed 
over  all  Europe;  gold-mines  were  reported; 
foreign  merchants  flocked  to  its  ports,  and 
bankers  and  money-lenders  from  the  Rhine- 
land    and    Lucca,    with    speculators    from 


106  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Provence,  were  carrying  over  foreign  coin, 
settling  in  the  towns,  and  taking  land  in 
the  country.  Sovereigns  at  Westminster — 
harassed  with  turbulent  barons  at  home 
and  wars  abroad — looked  to  a  conquered 
Ireland  to  supply  money  for  their  treasury, 
soldiers  for  their  armies,  provisions  for  their 
wars,  and  estates  for  their  favourites.  In 
haste  to  reap  their  full  gains  they  demanded 
nothing  better  than  a  conquest  rapid  and 
complete.  They  certainly  cannot  be  charged 
with  dimness  of  intention,  slackness  in  effort, 
or  want  of  resource  in  dilemmas.  It  would 
be  hard  to  imagine  any  method  of  domination 
which  was  not  used — among  the  varied  re- 
sources of  the  army,  the  church,  the  lawyers, 
the  money-lenders,  the  schoolmasters,  the 
Castle  intriguers  and  the  landlords.  The 
official  class  in  Dublin,  recruited  every  few 
years  with  uncorrupted  blood  from  England, 
urged  on  the  war  with  the  dogged  persistence 
of  their  race. 

But  the  conquest  of  the  Irish  nation  was 
not  so  simple  as  it  had  seemed  to  Anglo- 
Norman  speculators.  The  proposal  to  take 
the  land  out  of  the  hands  of  an  Irish  people 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION         107 

and  give  it  to  a  foreign  king,  could  only  have 
been  carried  out  by  the  slaughter  of  the  entire 
population.  No  lesser  effort  could  have 
turned  a  free  tribal  Ireland  into  a  dependent 
feudal  England. 

The  English  kings  had  made  a  further 
mistake.  They  proposed,  like  later  kings  of 
Spain  in  South  America,  to  exploit  Ireland 
for  the  benefit  of  the  crown  and  the  metropo- 
lis, not  for  the  welfare  of  any  class  whatever 
of  the  inhabitants;  the  colonists  were  to  be  a 
mere  garrison  to  conquer  and  hold  the  land 
for  the  king,  But  the  Anglo-Norman  ad- 
venturers had  gone  out  to  find  profit  for  them- 
selves, not  to  collect  Irish  wealth  for  London. 
Their  "loyalty"  failed  under  that  test. 
The  kings,  therefore,  found  themselves  en- 
gaged in  a  double  conflict,  against  the  Irish 
and  against  their  own  colonists,  and  were 
every  year  more  entangled  in  the  difficulties 
of  a  policy  false  from  the  outset. 

Yet  another  difficulty  disclosed  itself. 
Among  the  colonists  a  little  experience 
destroyed  the  English  theory  of  Irish  "bar- 
barism." The  invaders  were  drawn  to  their 
new  home  not  only  by  its  wealth  but  by  its 


108  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

beauty,  the  variety  and  gaiety  of  its  social 
life,  the  intelligence  of  its  inhabitants,  and 
the  attraction  of  its  learning  and  art.  Settlers, 
moreover,  could  neither  live  nor  till  the  lands 
they  had  seized,  nor  trade  in  the  seaports, 
nor  find  soldiers  for  their  defence,  without 
coming  to  terms  with  their  Irish  neighbours. 
To  them  the  way  of  wealth  lay  not  in  slaugh- 
ter but  in  traffic,  not  in  destroying  riches  but 
in  sharing  them.  The  colonists  compromised 
with  "the  Irish  enemy."  They  took  to  Irish 
dress  and  language;  they  recognised  Irish 
land  tenure,  as  alone  suited  to  the  country 
and  people,  one  also  that  gave  them  peace 
with  their  farmers  and  cattle-drivers,  and 
kept  out  of  their  estates  the  king's  sheriffs 
and  tax-gatherers;  they  levied  troops  from 
their  tenants  in  the  Irish  manner;  they  em- 
ployed Irishmen  in  offices  of  trust;  they  paid 
neighbouring  tribes  for  military  service — 
such  as  to  keep  roads  and  passes  open  for 
their  traders  and  messengers.  "English  born 
in  Ireland,"  "degenerate  English,"  were  as 
much  feared  by  the  king  as  the  "mere  Irish." 
They  were  not  counted  "of  English  birth"; 
lands  were  resumed  from  them,  office  forbid- 


THE  NORMAN  INVASION         109 

den  them.  In  every  successive  generation 
new  men  of  pure  English  blood  were  to  be  sent 
over  to  serve  the  king's  purpose  and  keep 
in  check  the  Ireland-born. 

The  Irish  wars,  therefore,  became  exceed- 
ingly confused — kings,  barons,  tribes,  all 
entangled  in  interminable  strife.  Every  chief, 
surrounded  by  dangers,  was  bound  to  turn  his 
court  into  a  place  of  arms  thronged  by  men 
ready  to  drive  back  the  next  attack  or  start 
on  the  next  foray.  Whatever  was  the  bur- 
den of  military  taxation  no  tribe  dared  to 
disarm  any  more  than  one  of  the  European 
countries  to-day.  The  Dublin  officials,  mean- 
while, eked  out  their  military  force  by  craft; 
they  created  and  encouraged  civil  wars;  they 
called  on  the  Danes  who  had  become  mingled 
with  the  Irish  to  come  out  from  them  and 
resume  their  Danish  nationality,  as  the  only 
means  of  being  allowed  protection  of  law  and 
freedom  to  trade.  To  avert  the  dangers  of 
friendship  and  peace  between  races  in  Ireland 
they  became  missionaries  of  disorder,  apostles 
of  contention.  Civil  wars  within  any  country 
exhaust  themselves  and  come  to  a  natural 
end.    But  civil  wars  maintained  by  a  foreign 


110  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

power  from  without  have  no  conclusion. 
If  any  strong  leader  arose,  Anglo-Norman  or 
Irish,  the  whole  force  of  England  was  called 
in,  and  the  ablest  commanders  fetched  over 
from  the  French  wars,  great  men  of  battle 
and  plunder,  to  fling  the  province  back  into 
weakness  and  disorder. 

In  England  the  feudal  system  had  been 
brought  to  great  perfection — a  powerful 
king,  a  state  organised  for  common  action, 
with  a  great  military  force,  a  highly  organ- 
ised treasury,  a  powerful  nobility,  and  a 
dependent  people.  The  Irish  tribal  system, 
on  the  other  hand,  rested  on  a  people  en- 
dowed with  a  wide  freedom,  guided  by  an 
ancient  tradition,  and  themselves  the  guar- 
dians of  their  law  and  of  their  land.  They  had 
still  to  show  what  strength  lay  in  their 
spiritual  ideal  of  a  nation's  life  to  subdue  the 
minds  of  their  invaders,  and  to  make  a  stand 
against  their  organised  force. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   SECOND   IRISH   REVIVAL 

1200-1520 

The  first  Irish  revival  after  the  Danish 
wars  showed  the  strength  of  the  ancient 
Gaelic  civilisation.  The  second  victory  which 
the  genius  of  the  people  won  over  the  minds 
of  the  new  invaders  was  a  more  astonishing 
proof  of  the  vitality  of  the  Irish  culture,  the 
firm  structure  of  their  law,  and  the  cohesion 
of  the  people. 

Henry  II  in  1171  had  led  an  army  for  "the 
conquest "  of  Ireland.  Three  hundred  years 
later,  when  Henry  VII  in  1487  turned  his 
thoughts  to  Ireland  he  found  no  conquered 
land.  An  earthen  ditch  with  a  palisade  on  the 
top  had  been  raised  to  protect  all  that  was 
left  of  English  Ireland,  called  the  "Pale"  from 
its  encircling  fence.  Outside  was  a  country 
of  Irish  language,  dress,  and  customs.  Thirty 
ill 


112  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

miles  west  of  Dublin  was  "by  west  of  English 
law."  Norman  lords  had  married  daughters 
of  Irish  chiefs  all  over  the  country,  and  made 
combinations  and  treaties  with  every  province. 
Their  children  went  to  be  fostered  in  kindly 
houses  of  the  Irish.  Into  their  own  palisaded 
forts,  lifted  on  great  mounds  of  earth,  with 
three-fold  entrenchments,  came  Irish  poets 
singing  the  traditions,  the  love-songs,  the 
prayers  and  hymns  of  the  Gaels.  A  Norman 
shrine  of  gold  for  St.  Patrick's  tooth  shows 
how  the  Norman  lord  of  Athenry  had  adopted 
the  national  saint.  Many  settlers  changed 
their  names  to  an  Irish  form,  and  taking  up 
the  clan  system  melted  into  the  Irish  popu- 
lation. Irish  speech  was  so  universal  that  a 
proclamation  of  Henry  VIII  in  a  Dublin 
parliament  had  to  be  translated  into  Irish 
by  the  earl  of  Ormond. 

Irish  manners  had  entered  also  into  the 
town  houses  of  the  merchants.  Foreign 
traders  welcomed  "natives"  to  the  seaports, 
employed  them,  bought  their  wares,  took 
them  into  partnership,  married  with  them, 
allowed  them  to  plead  Irish  law  in  their  courts 
— and    not  only  that,  but  they  themselves 


THE  SECOND  IRISH  REVIVAL    113 

wore  the  forbidden  Irish  dress,  talked  Irish 
with  the  other  townsfolk,  and  joined  in  their 
national  festivities  and  ceremonies  and  songs. 
Almost  to  the  very  gates  of  Dublin,  in  the 
centre  of  what  should  have  been  pure  English 
land,  the  merchants  went  riding  Irish  fashion, 
in  Irish  dress,  and  making  merry  with  their 
forbidden  Irish  clients. 

This  Irish  revival  has  been  attributed  to  a 
number  of  causes — to  an  invasion  of  Edward 
Bruce  in  1315,  to  the  "degeneracy"  of  the 
Normans,  to  the  vice  of  the  Irish,  to  the  Wars 
of  the  Roses,  to  the  want  of  energy  of  Dub- 
lin Castle,  to  the  over-education  of  Irish 
people  in  Oxford,  to  agitation  and  lawyers. 
The  cause  lay  far  deeper.  It  lay  in  the  rich 
national  civilisation  which  the  Irish  genius  had 
built  up,  strong  in  its  courageous  democracy, 
in  its  broad  sympathies,  in  its  widespread 
culture,  in  its  freedom,  and  in  its  humanities. 
So  long  as  the  Irish  language  preserved  to  the 
people  their  old  culture  they  never  failed  to 
absorb  into  their  life  every  people  that  came 
among  them.  It  was  only  when  they  lost 
hold  of  the  tradition  of  their  fathers  and  their 
old  social  order  that  this  great  influence  fell 


114  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

from  them,  and  strangers  no  longer  yielded 
to  their  power. 

The  social  fusion  of  Normans  and  Irish 
was  the  starting-point  of  a  lively  civilisation 
to  which  each  race  brought  its  share.  To- 
gether they  took  a  brilliant  part  in  the  com- 
merce which  was  broadening  over  the  world. 
The  Irish  were  great  travellers;  they  sailed 
the  Adriatic,  journeyed  in  the  Levant,  visited 
the  factories  of  Egypt,  explored  China,  with 
all  the  old  love  of  knowledge  and  infinite 
curiosity.  They  were  as  active  and  ingenious 
in  business  as  the  Normans  themselves. 
Besides  exporting  raw  materials,  L'ish-made 
linen  and  cloth  and  cloaks  and  leather  were 
carried  as  far  as  Russia  and  Naples;  Norman 
lords  and  Irish  chieftains  alike  took  in  ex- 
change velvets,  silks  and  satins,  cloth  of  gold 
and  embroideries,  wines  and  spices.  Irish  gold- 
smiths made  the  rich  vessels  that  adorned  the 
tables  both  of  Normans  and  Irish.  Irish 
masons  built  the  new  churches  of  continental 
design,  carving  at  every  turn  their  own  tradi- 
tional Irish  ornaments.  Irish  scribes  illumi- 
ated  manuscripts  which  were  as  much  praised 
in  a  Norman  castle  as  in  an  Irish  fort.    Both 


THE  SECOND  IRISH  REVIVAL     115 

peoples  used  translations  into  Irish  made  by 
Gaelic  scholars  from  the  fashionable  Latin 
books  of  the  Continent.  Both  races  sent 
students  and  professors  to  every  university 
in  Europe — men  recognised  of  deep  knowl- 
edge among  the  most  learned  men  of  Italy 
and  France.  A  kind  of  national  education 
was  being  worked  out.  Not  one  of  the  Irish 
chief doms  allowed  its  schools  to  perish,  and 
to  these  ancient  schools  the  settlers  in  the 
towns  added  others  of  their  own,  to  which  the 
Irish  also  in  time  flocked,  so  that  youths  of 
the  two  races  learned  together.  As  Irish  was 
the  common  language,  so  Latin  was  the 
second  tongue  for  cultivated  people  and  for 
all  men  of  business  in  their  continental  trade. 
The  English  policy  made  English  the  language 
of  traitors  to  their  people,  but  of  no  use 
either  for  trade  or  literature. 

The  uplifting  of  the  national  ideal  was 
shown  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centu- 
ries by  a  revival  of  learning  like  that  which 
followed  the  Danish  wars.  Not  one  of  the 
hereditary  houses  of  historians,  lawyers,  poets, 
physicians,  seems  to  have  failed:  we  find 
them  at  work  in  the  mountains  of  Donegal, 


116  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

along  the  Shannon,  in  lake  islands,  among 
the  bare  rocks  of  Clare,  in  the  plains  of  Meath, 
in  the  valleys  of  Munster.  In  astronomy 
Irishmen  were  still  first  in  Europe.  In  medi- 
cine they  had  all  the  science  of  their  age. 
Nearly  all  our  knowledge  of  Irish  literature 
comes  from  copies  of  older  works  made  by 
hundreds  of  industrious  scribes  of  this  period. 
From  time  to  time  Assemblies  of  all  the 
learned  men  were  called  together  by  patriotic 
chiefs,  or  by  kings  rising  into  high  leadership 
— "  coming  to  Tara,"  as  the  people  said.  The 
old  order  was  maintained  in  these  national 
festivals.  Spacious  avenues  of  white  houses 
were  made  ready  for  poets,  streets  of  peaked 
hostels  for  musicians,  straight  roads  of  smooth 
conical-roofed  houses  for  chroniclers,  another 
avenue  for  bards  and  jugglers,  and  so  on; 
and  on  the  bright  surface  of  the  pleasant  hills 
sleeping-booths  of  woven  branches  for  the 
companies.  From  sea  to  sea  scholars  and 
artists  gathered  to  show  their  skill  to  the  men 
of  Ireland;  and  in  these  glorious  assemblies 
the  people  learned  anew  the  wealth  of  their 
civilisation,  and  celebrated  with  fresh  ardour 
the  unity  of  the  Irish  nation. 


THE  SECOND  IRISH  REVIVAL     117 

It  was  no  wonder  that  in  this  high  fervour 
of  the  country  the  Anglo-Normans,  like  the 
Danes  and  the  Northumbrians  before  them, 
were  won  to  a  civilisation  so  vital  and  im- 
passioned, so  human  and  gay.  But  the 
mixed  civilisation  found  no  favour  with 
the  government;  the  "wild  Irish"  and  the 
"degenerate  English"  were  no  better  than 
"brute  beasts,"  the  English  said,  abandoned 
to  "filthy  customs"  amd  to  "a  damnable 
law  that  was  no  law,  hateful  to  God  and 
man."  Every  measure  was  taken  to  destroy 
the  growing  amity  of  the  peoples,  not  only 
by  embroiling  them  in  war,  but  by  making 
union  of  Ireland  impossible  in  religion  or  in 
education,  and  by  destroying  public  confi- 
dence. The  new  central  organisation  of  the 
Irish  church  made  it  a  powerful  weapon  in 
English  hands.  An  Englishman  was  at  once 
put  in  every  archbishopric  and  every  prin- 
cipal see,  a  prelate  who  was  often  a  Castle 
official  as  well,  deputy,  chancellor,  justice, 
treasurer,  or  the  like,  or  a  good  soldier — in 
any  case  hostile  to  every  Irish  affection.  A 
national  church  in  the  old  Irish  sense  dis- 
appeared; in  the  English  idea  the  church  was 


118  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

to  destroy  the  nation.  Higher  education  was 
also  denied  to  both  races.  No  Irish  univer- 
sity could  live  under  the  eye  of  an  English 
primate  of  Armagh,  and  every  attempt  of 
Anglo-Normans  to  set  up  a  university  for 
Ireland  at  Dublin  or  Drogheda  was  instantly 
crushed.  To  avert  general  confidence  and 
mutual  understanding,  an  alien  class  was 
maintained  in  the  country,  who  for  consider- 
ations of  wealth,  power,  a  privileged  posi- 
tion, betrayed  the  peace  of  Ireland  to  the 
profit  of  England.  No  pains,  for  example, 
were  spared  by  the  kings  to  conciliate  and 
use  so  important  a  house  as  that  of  the  earls 
of  Ormond.  For  nearly  two  hundred  years, 
as  it  happened,  the  heirs  of  this  house  were 
always  minors,  held  in  wardship  by  the  king. 
English  training  at  his  court,  visits  to  Lon- 
don, knighthoods  and  honours  there,  high 
posts  in  Ireland,  prospects  of  new  conquests 
of  Irish  land,  a  winking  of  government  offi- 
cials at  independent  privileges  used  on  their 
estates  by  Ormond  lords — such  influences 
tied  each  heir  in  turn  to  England,  and 
separated  them  from  Irish  interests — a 
"loyal"  house,  said  the  English — "fair  and 


THE  SECOND  IRISH  REVIVAL     119 

false    as     Ormond,"    said     the    people    of 
Ireland. 

Both  races  suffered  under  this  foreign  mis- 
rule. Both  were  brayed  in  the  same  mortar. 
Both  were  driven  to  the  demand  for  home 
rule.  The  national  movement  never  flagged 
for  a  single  generation.  Never  for  a  moment 
did  the  Irish  cease  from  the  struggle;  in  the 
swell  and  tumult  of  that  tossing  sea  com- 
manders emerged  now  in  one  province,  now 
in  another,  each  to  fall  back  into  the  darkness 
while  the  next  pressed  on  to  take  his  place. 
An  Anglo-Norman  parliament  claimed  (1459) 
that  Ireland  was  by  its  constitution  separate 
from  the  laws  and  statutes  of  England,  and 
prayed  to  have  a  separate  coinage  for  their 
land  as  in  the  kingdom  of  England.  Con- 
federacies of  Irish  and  Anglo-Normans  were 
formed,  one  following  another  in  endless  and 
hopeless  succession.  Through  all  civil  strife 
we  may  plainly  see  the  steady  drift  of  the 
peoples  to  a  common  patriotism.  There  was 
panic  in  England  at  these  ceaseless  efforts  to 
restore  an  Irish  nation,  for  "Ireland,"  English 
statesmen  said,  "was  as  good  as  gone  if  a  wild 
Irish  wyrlinge  should  be  chosen  there  asking." 


120  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

For  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  house  of  the 
Fitzgeralds,  the  most  powerful  house  in  Ire- 
land, might  mediate  between  the  peoples 
whose  blood,  English  and  Irish,  they  shared. 
Earl  Gerald  of  Desmond  led  a  demand  for 
home  rule  in  1341,  and  that  Ireland  should 
not  be  governed  by  "needy  men  sent  from 
England,  without  knowledge  of  Ireland  or 
its  circumstances."  Earl  Gerald  the  Rhymer 
of  the  same  house  (1359)  was  a  patriot  leader 
too — a  witty  and  ingenious  composer  of 
Irish  poetry,  who  excelled  all  the  English  and 
many  of  the  Irish  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
Irish  language,  poetry,  and  history,  and  of 
other  learning.  A  later  Earl  Gerald  (1416), 
foster-son  of  O'Brien  and  cousin  of  Henry  VI, 
was  complimented  by  the  Republic  of  Flor- 
ence, in  a  letter  recalling  the  Florentine 
origin  of  the  Fitzgeralds,  for  the  glory  he 
brought  to  that  city,  since  its  citizens  had 
possessions  as  far  as  Hungary  and  Greece, 
and  now  "through  you  and  yours  bear  sway 
even  in  Ibernia,  the  most  remote  island  of 
the  world."  In  Earl  Thomas  (1467)  the  Irish 
saw  the  first  "foreigner"  to  be  the  martyr  of 
their   cause.      He   had    furthered    trade    of 


THE  SECOND  IRISH  REVIVAL    121 

European  peoples  with  Irishmen;  he  had 
urgently  pressed  union  of  the  races;  he  had 
planned  a  university  for  Ireland  at  Drogheda 
(Armagh  having  been  long  destroyed  by  the 
English).  As  his  reward  he  was  beheaded 
without  trial  by  the  earl  of  Worcester  famed 
as  "the  Butcher,"  who  had  come  over  with 
a  claim  to  some  of  the  Desmond  lands  in  Cork. 
His  people  saw  in  his  death  "the  ruin  of 
Ireland";  they  laid  his  body  with  bitter 
lamentations  by  the  Atlantic  at  Tralee,  where 
the  ocean  wind  moaning  in  the  caverns  still 
sounds  to  the  peasants  as  "the  Desmond's 
keen." 

Other  Fitzgeralds,  earls  of  Kildare,  who  had 
married  into  every  leading  Irish  house,  took 
up  in  their  turn  the  national  cause.  Garrett 
Mor  "the  great"  (1477-1513),  married  to  the 
cousin  of  Henry  VII,  made  close  alliances 
with  every  Irish  chief,  steadily  spread  his 
power  over  the  land,  and  kept  up  the  family 
relations  with  Florence;  and  by  his  wit,  his 
daring,  the  gaiety  of  his  battle  with  slander, 
fraud,  and  violence,  won  great  authority. 
His  son  Garrett  inherited  and  enlarged  his 
great  territory.     Maynooth  under  him  was 


122  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

one  of  the  richest  earls'  houses  of  that  time. 
When  he  rode  out  in  his  scarlet  cloak  he  was 
followed  by  four  hundred  Irish  spearmen. 
His  library  was  half  of  Irish  books;  he  made 
his  English  wife  read,  write,  and  speak  per- 
fectly the  Irish  tongue;  he  had  for  his  chief 
poet  an  Irishman,  "full  of  the  grace  of  God 
and  of  learning";  his  secretary  was  employed 
to  write  for  his  library  "divers  chronicles" 
of  Ireland.  The  Irish  loved  him  for  his 
justice,  for  his  piety,  and  that  he  put  on  them 
no  arbitrary  tax.  By  a  singular  charm  of 
nature  he  won  the  hearts  of  all,  wife,  son, 
jailor  in  London  Tower,  and  English  lords. 

His  whole  policy  was  union  in  his  country, 
and  Ireland  for  the  Irish.  The  lasting  argu- 
ment for  self-government  as  against  rule  from 
over-sea  was  heard  in  his  cry  to  Wolsey  and 
the  lords  at  Westminster — "You  hear  of  a 
case  as  it  were  in  a  dream,  and  feel  not  the 
smart  that  vexeth  us."  He  attempted  to 
check  English  interference  with  private  sub- 
jects in  Ireland.  He  refused  to  admit  that  a 
commission  to  Cardinal  Wolsey  as  legate  for 
England  gave  him  authority  in  Ireland. 
The  mark  of  his  genius  lay  above  all  in  his 


THE  SECOND  IRISH  REVIVAL     123 

resolve  to  close  dissensions  and  to  put  an 
end  to  civil  wars.  When  as  deputy  he  rode 
out  to  war  against  disturbed  tribes,  his  first 
business  was  not  to  fight,  but  to  call  an 
assembly  in  the  Irish  manner  which  should 
decide  the  quarrel  by  arbitration  according 
to  law.  He  "made  peace,"  his  enemies  said, 
and  the  nightmare  of  forced  dissension  gave 
way  before  this  new  statesmanship  of  national 
union. 

Never  were  the  Irish  "so  corrupted  by 
affection"  for  a  lord  deputy,  never  were  they 
so  obedient,  both  from  fear  and  from  love, 
so  Henry  VIII  was  warned.  In  spite  of 
official  intrigues,  through  all  eddying  acci- 
dents, the  steady  pressure  of  the  country 
itself  was  towards  union. 

The  great  opportunity  had  come  to  weld 
together  the  two  races  in  Ireland,  and  to 
establish  a  common  civilisation  by  a  leader 
to  whom  both  peoples  were  perfectly  known, 
whose  sympathies  were  engaged  in  both,  and 
who  as  deputy  of  the  English  king  had  won 
the  devoted  confidence  of  the  Irish  people. 

There  was  one  faction  alone  which  no 
reason   could    convert — the  alien    minority 


124  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

that  held  interests  and  possessions  in  both 
islands,  and  openly  used  England  to  advance 
their  power  and  Ireland  to  increase  their 
wealth.  They  had  no  country,  for  neither 
England  nor  Ireland  could  be  counted  such. 
They  knew  how  to  darken  ignorance  and 
inflame  prejudice  in  London  against  their 
fellow-countrymen  in  Ireland — "the  strange 
savage  nature  of  the  people,"  "savage  vile 
poor  persons  which  never  did  know  or  feel 
wealth  or  civility,"  "having  no  knowledge 
of  the  laws  of  God  or  of  the  king,"  nor 
any  way  to  know  them  save  through  the 
good  offices  of  these  slanderers,  apostles  of 
their  own  virtue.  The  anti-national  minority 
would  have  had  no  strength  if  left  alone  to 
face  the  growing  toleration  in  Ireland.  In 
support  from  England  it  found  its  sole 
security  —  and  through  its  aid  Ireland  was 
flung  back  into  disorder. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   TAKING   OF   THE   LAND 

1520-1625 

Henry  VIII,  like  Henry  II,  was  not 
concerned  to  give  "civilisation"  to  Ireland. 
He  was  concerned  to  take  the  land.  His 
reasons  were  the  same.  If  he  possessed  the 
soil  in  his  own  right,  apart  from  the  English 
parliament,  and  commanded  its  fighting-men 
and  its  wealth,  he  could  beat  down  rebellion 
in  England,  smite  Scotland  into  obedience, 
conquer  France,  and  create  an  empire  of 
bounds  unknown — and  in  time  of  danger 
where  so  sure  a  shelter  for  a  flying  sovereign? 
Claims  were  again  revived  to  "  our  rightful 
inheritance";  quibbles  of  law  once  more 
served  for  the  king's  "title  to  the  land"; 
there  was  another  great  day  of  deception  in 
Dublin.  Henry  asked  the  title  of  King  of 
Ireland  instead  of  Lord,  and  offered  to  the 
chiefs  in  return  full  security  for  their  lands, 
125 


126  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

For  months  of  subtle  preparation  his  promises 
were  explicit.  All  cause  of  offence  was  care- 
fully taken  away.  Finally  a  parliament  was 
summoned  (1541)  of  lords  carefully  bribed 
and  commons  carefully  packed — the  very 
pattern,  in  fact,  of  that  which  was  later  called 
to  vote  the  Union.  And  while  they  were  by 
order  voting  the  title,  the  king  and  council 
were  making  arrangements  together  to  render 
void  both  sides  of  the  bargain.  First  the 
wording  of  the  title  was  so  altered  as  to 
take  away  any  value  in  the  "common  con- 
sent" of  parliament,  since  the  king  asserted 
his  title  to  Ireland  by  inheritance  and  con- 
quest, before  and  beyond  all  mandate  of 
the  popular  will.  And  secondly  it  was 
arranged  that  Henry  was  under  no  obliga- 
tion by  negotiations  or  promises  as  to  the 
land.  For  since,  by  the  council's  assurance 
to  the  king  on  the  day  the  title  was  passed, 
there  was  no  land  occupied  by  any  "disobe- 
dient" people  which  was  not  really  the  king's 
property  by  ancient  inheritance  or  by  con- 
fiscation, Henry  might  do  as  he  would  with 
his  own.  Royal  concessions  too  must  depend 
on  how  much  revenue  could  be  extracted 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND      127 

from  them  to  keep  up  suitably  the  title  of 
king — on  whether  it  was  judicious  to  give 
Irishmen  titles  which  they  might  afterwards 
plead  to  be  valid — on  whether  Henry  would 
find  the  promised  grants  convenient  in  case 
he  chose  later  to  proceed  to  "conquest  and 
extermination." 

Parliament  was  dismissed  for  thirteen  years, 
Henry,  in  fact,  had  exactly  fulfilled  the  project 
of  mystification  he  proposed  twenty  years 
before — "to  be  politically  and  secretly  han- 
dled." Every  trace  of  Irish  law  and  land 
tenure  must  finally  be  abolished  so  that  the 
soil  should  lie  at  the  king's  will  alone,  but 
this  was  to  be  done  at  first  by  secret  and 
politic  measures,  here  a  little  and  there  a 
little,  so  that,  as  he  said,  the  Irish  lords  should 
as  yet  conceive  no  suspicion  that  they  were 
to  be  "constrained  to  live  under  our  law  or 
put  from  all  the  lands  by  them  now  detained." 
"Politic  practices,"  said  Henry,  would  serve 
till  such  time  as  the  strength  of  the  Irish 
should  be  diminished,  their  leaders  taken 
from  them,  and  division  put  among  themselves 
so  that  they  join  not  together.  If  there  had 
been  any  truth  or  consideration  for  Ireland 


128  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

in  the  royal  compact  some  hope  of  com- 
promise and  conciliation  might  have  opened. 
But  the  whole  scheme  was  rooted  and 
grounded  in  falsehood,  and  Ireland  had  yet 
to  learn  how  far  sufferings  by  the  quibbles 
and  devices  of  law  might  exceed  the  disasters 
of  open  war.  Chiefs  could  be  ensnared  one  by 
one  in  misleading  contracts,  practically  void. 
A 'false  claimant  could  be  put  on  a  territory 
and  supported  by  English  soldiers  in  a  civil 
war,  till  the  actual  chief  was  exiled  or  yielded 
the  land  to  the  king's  ownership.  No  chief, 
true  or  false,  had  power  to  give  away  the 
people's  land,  and  the  king  was  face  to  face 
with  an  indignant  people,  who  refused  to 
admit  an  illegal  bargain.  Then  came  a 
march  of  soldiers  over  the  district,  hanging, 
burning,  shooting  "the  rebels,"  casting  the 
peasants  out  on  the  hillsides.  There  was 
also  the  way  of  "conquest."  The  whole 
of  the  inhabitants  were  to  be  exiled,  and 
the  countries  made  vacant  and  waste  for 
English  peopling:  the  sovereign's  rule  would 
be  immediate  and  peremptory  over  those 
whom  he  had  thus  planted  by  his  sole  will, 
and  Ireland  would  be  kept  subject  in  a  way 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND      129 

unknown  in  England;  then  "the  king  might 
say  Ireland  was  clearly  won,  and  after  that 
he  would  be  at  little  cost  and  receive  great 
profits,  and  men  and  money  at  pleasure." 
There  would  be  no  such  difficulty,  Henry's 
advisers  said  as  those  of  Henry  II  had  said 
before,  to  "subdue  or  exile  them  as  hath 
been  thought,"  for  from  the  settled  lands 
plantation  could  be  spread  into  the  surround- 
ing territories,  and  the  Irishry  steadily  pushed 
back  into  the  sea.  Henceforth  it  became  a 
fixed  policy  to  "exterminate  and  exile  the 
country  people  of  the  Irishry."  Whether 
they  submitted  or  not,  the  king  was  to  "in- 
habit their  country"  with  English  blood. 
But  again  as  in  the  twelfth  century  it  was  the 
king  and  the  metropolis  that  were  to  profit, 
not  any  class  of  inhabitants  of  Ireland. 

A  series  of  great  Confiscations  put  through 
an  enslaved  Pale  parliament  made  smooth 
the  way  of  conquest.  An  Act  of  1536  for 
the  attainder  of  the  earl  of  Kildare  confis- 
cated his  estates  to  the  king,  that  is,  the  main 
part  of  Leinster.  In  1570  the  bulk  of  Ulster, 
as  territory  of  the  "traitor"  Shane  O'Neill, 
was  declared  forfeited  in  the  same  way.    And 


130  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

in  1586  the  chief  part  of  Munster,  the  lordship 
of  the  "traitor"  earl  of  Desmond.  Another 
Act  of  1536  forfeited  to  the  crown  all  ancient 
claims  of  English  lords  to  lands  which  had 
been  granted  to  them,  and  afterwards  re- 
covered by  the  original  Irish  owners.  An- 
other in  1537  vested  in  the  king  all  the  lands  of 
the  dissolved  monasteries.  By  these  various 
titles  given  to  the  crown,  it  was  hard  for  any 
acres  to  slip  through  unawares,  English  or 
Irish.  An  Act  of  1569  moreover  reduced 
all  Ireland  to  shire  land;  in  other  words,  all 
Irish  chiefs  who  had  made  indentures  with 
the  crown  were  deprived  of  all  the  benefits 
which  were  included  in  such  indentures,  and 
the  brehon  or  Irish  law,  with  all  its  protection 
to  the  poor,  was  abolished. 

These  laws  and  confiscations  gave  to  the 
new  sovereigns  of  the  Irish  the  particular 
advantage  that  if  their  subjects  should  resist 
the  taking  of  the  land,  they  were  legally 
"rebels,"  and  as  such  outside  the  laws  of 
war.  It  was  this  new  fiction  of  law  that  gave 
the  Tudor  wars  their  unsurpassed  horror. 
Thus  began  what  Bacon  called  the  "wild 
chase  on  the  wild  Irishmen."    The  forfeiture 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND      131 

of  land  of  the  tribe  for  the  crime  of  a  chief 
was  inconceivable  in  Irish  law;  the  claim  of 
the  commonalty  to  unalterable  possession  of 
their  soil  was  deeply  engraven  in  the  hearts 
of  the  people,  who  stood  together  to  hold 
their  land,  believing  justice  and  law  to  be  on 
their  side,  and  the  right  of  near  two  thousand 
years  of  ordered  possession.  At  a  prodigious 
price,  at  inconceivable  cost  of  human  woe, 
the  purging  of  the  soil  from  the  Irish  race  was 
begun.  Such  mitigations  as  the  horrors  of 
war  allow  were  forbidden  to  these  "rebels" 
by  legal  fiction.  Torturers  and  hangmen 
went  out  with  the  soldiers.  There  was  no 
protection  for  any  soul;  the  old,  the  sick, 
infants,  women,  scholars;  any  one  of  them 
might  be  a  landholder,  or  a  carrier  on  of 
the  tradition  of  the  tribal  owners,  and  was  in 
any  case  a  rebel  appointed  to  death.  No 
quarter  was  allowed,  no  faith  kept,  and  no 
truce  given.  Chiefs  were  made  to  "draw 
and  carry,"  to  abase  them  before  the  tribes. 
Poets  and  historians  were  slaughtered  and 
their  books  and  genealogies  burned,  so  that 
no  man  "might  know  his  own  grandfather" 
and  all  Irishmen  be  confounded  in  the  same 


132  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

ignorance  and  abasement,  all  glories  gone, 
and  all  rights  lost.  The  great  object  of  the 
government  was  to  destroy  the  whole  tradi- 
tion, wipe  out  the  Gaelic  memories,  and  begin 
a  new  English  life. 

But  even  with  all  legal  aids  to  extermina- 
tion the  land  war  proved  more  difficult  than 
the  English  had  expected.  It  lasted  for  some 
seventy  years.  The  Irish  were  inexhaus- 
tible in  defence,  prodigious  in  courage,  and 
endured  hardships  that  Englishmen  could 
not  survive.  The  most  powerful  governors 
that  England  could  supply  were  sent  over, 
and  furnished  with  English  armies  and  stores. 
Fleets  held  the  harbours,  and  across  all  the 
seas  from  Newfoundland  to  Dantzic  gathered 
in  provisions  for  the  soldiers.  Armies  fed 
from  the  sea-ports  chased  the  Irish  through 
the  winter  months,  when  the  trees  were  bare 
and  naked  and  the  kine  without  milk,  killing 
every  living  thing  and  burning  every  granary 
of  corn,  so  that  famine  should  slay  what  the 
sword  had  lost.  Out  of  the  woods'  the 
famishing  Irish  came  creeping  on  their  hands, 
for  their  legs  would  not  bear  them,  speaking 
like  ghosts  crying  out  of  their  graves,  if  they 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND      133 

found  a  few  water-cresses  flocking  as  to  a 
feast;  so  that  in  short  space  there  were  none 
almost  left  and  a  most  populous  and  plentiful 
country  suddenly  left  void  of  man  and  beast 
— a  place  where  no  voice  was  heard  in  ears 
save  woe  and  fear  and  grief,  a  place  where 
there  was  no  pause  for  consolation  nor  ap- 
pearance of  joy  on  face. 

Thus  according  to  the  English  king's 
forecast  was  "the  strength  of  the  Irish 
diminished  and  their  captains  taken  from 
them."  One  great  house  after  another  was 
swept  out  of  Irish  life.  In  1529  the  great 
earl  of  Kildare  died  of  a  broken  heart  in  the 
Tower  at  the  news  that  his  son  had  been 
betrayed  by  a  forged  letter  into  a  rising. 
His  five  brothers  and  his  son,  young  Silken 
Thomas,  captured  by  a  false  pledge  of  safety, 
were  clapped  all  six  of  them  into  the  Tower 
and  hanged  in  London.  The  six  outraged 
corpses  at  Tyburn  marked  the  close  of  the 
first  and  last  experiment  in  which  a  great 
ruler,  sharing  the  blood  of  the  two  races, 
practised  in  the  customs  of  both  countries, 
would  have  led  Ireland  in  a  way  of  peace, 
and  brought  about  through  equal  prosperity 


134  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

and  order  a  lasting  harmony  between  the 
English  and  Irish  people.  Three  hundred 
years  later  an  old  blackened  pedigree  kept 
in  the  Tower  showed  against  the  names  of 
half  the  Fitzgeralds  up  to  that  time  the  words 
"Beheaded"  or  "Attainted" — so  terrible 
were  the  long  efforts  to  extinguish  the  talent 
and  subdue  the  patriotism  of  that  great  family. 

Ormond,  too,  was  "to  be  bridled."  It  was 
said  his  house  was  in  no  mood  to  hand  over 
the  "rule  and  obedience"  of  south  Ireland 
to  the  king.  At  a  feast  at  Ely  House  in 
Holborn  (1547)  the  earl  and  seventeen  of  his 
followers  lay  dead  out  of  thirty -five  who  had 
been  poisoned.  No  inquiry  was  made  into 
that  crime.  "God  called  him  to  His  mercy," 
the  Irish  said  of  this  patriot  Ormond,  "before 
he  could  see  that  day  after  which  doubtless 
he  longed  and  looked — the  restitution  of 
the  house  of  Kildare."  His  son  was  held 
fast  in  London  to  be  brought  up,  as  far  as 
education  could  do  it,  an  Englishman. 

The  third  line  of  the  Anglo-Norman  leaders 
was  laid  low.  The  earl  of  Desmond,  after 
twenty-five  years  of  alternate  prison  and  war, 
saw  the  chief  leaders  of  his  house  hanged  or 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND     135 

slain,  before  he  himself  was  killed  in  1583: 
and  his  wretched  son,  born  in  the  Tower,  was 
brought  from  that  prison  to  be  shown  to  his 
heart-broken  people — stunted  in  body,  en- 
feebled in  mind,  half  an  idiot,  a  protestant — 
"the  Tower  Earl,"  "the  Queen's  Earl,"  cried 
the  people. 

The  Irish  chiefs  were  also  broken  by  guile 
and  assassination.  O'Brien  was  separated 
from  his  people  by  a  peerage  (1543),  an  Eng- 
lish inauguration  without  the  ancient  rites 
as  head  of  his  lands,  and  an  English  guard  of 
soldiers  (1558).  That  house  played  no  further 
part  in  the  Irish  struggle. 

The  chief  warrior  of  the  north  and  terror 
of  Elizabeth's  generals  was  Shane  O'Neill. 
The  deputy  Sidney  devised  many  plots  to 
poison  or  kill  the  man  he  could  not  conquer, 
and  at  last  brought  over  from  Scotland  hired 
assassins  who  accomplished  the  murder  (1567). 
A  map  made  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  marked 
the  place  of  the  crime  that  relieved  England 
of  her  greatest  fear — "Here  Shane  O'Neill 
was  slain."  After  him  the  struggle  of  the 
north  to  keep  their  land  and  independence 
was  maintained  by  negotiation  and  by  war 


136  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

for  forty  years,  under  the  leading  of  the 
greatest  of  Irish  statesmen  and  generals 
Hugh  O'Neill  earl  of  Tyrone,  and  the  soldier- 
patriot  Aedh  Ruadh  O'Donnell  earl  of 
Tirconnell.  English  intrigue  triumphed  when 
Red  Hugh  was  poisoned  by  a  secret  agent 
(1602)  and  when  by  a  crafty  charge  of  con- 
spiracy his  brother  Rory  O'Donnell  and 
Hugh  O'Neill  were  driven  from  their  country 
(1607).  The  flight  of  the  earls  marked  the 
destruction  by  violence  of  the  old  Gaelic 
polity — that  federation  of  tribes  which  had 
made  of  their  common  country  the  storehouse 
of  Europe  for  learning,  the  centre  of  the 
noblest  mission- work  that  the  continent  ever 
knew,  the  home  of  arts  and  industries,  the 
land  of  a  true  democracy  where  men  held 
the  faith  of  a  people  owning  their  soil,  in- 
structed in  their  traditions,  and  themselves 
guardians  of  their  national  life. 

Henry  VIII  had  found  Ireland  a  land  of 
Irish  civilisation  and  law,  with  a  people 
living  by  tribal  tenure,  and  two  races  drawing 
together  to  form  a  new  self-governing  nation. 
A  hundred  years  later,  when  Elizabeth  and 
James  I  had  completed  his  work,  all  the  great 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND      137 

leaders,  Anglo-Irish  and  Irish,  had  disap- 
peared, the  people  had  been  half  exterminated, 
alien  and  hostile  planters  set  in  their  place, 
tribal  tenure  obliterated,  every  trace  of  Irish 
law  swept  clean  from  the  Irish  statute-book, 
and  an  English  form  of  state  government 
effectively  established. 

Was  this  triumph  due  to  the  weakness  of 
tribal  government  and  the  superior  value  of 
the  feudal  land  tenure?  How  far,  in  fact, 
did  the  Irish  civilisation  invite  and  lend 
itself  to  this  destruction? 

It  has  been  said  that  it  was  by  Irish  soldiers 
that  Irish  liberties  were  destroyed.  The 
Tudors  and  their  councillors  were  under  no 
such  illusions.  Their  fear  was  that  the 
Irish,  if  they  suspected  the  real  intention 
of  the  English,  would  all  combine  in  one  war; 
and  in  fact  when  the  purpose  of  the  govern- 
ment became  clear  in  Ireland  an  English  army 
of  conquest  had  to  be  created.  "Have  no 
dread  nor  fear,"  cried  Red  Hugh  to  his  Irish- 
men, "of  the  great  numbers  of  the  soldiers 
of  London,  nor  of  the  strangeness  of  their 
weapons  and  arms."  Order  after  order  went 
out  to  "weed  the  bands  of  Irish,"  to  purge 


138  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

the  army  of  all  "such  dangerous  people." 
Soldiers  from  England  and  from  Berwick 
were  brought  over  at  double  the  pay  of  the 
Irish.  For  warmth  and  comfort  they  were 
clothed  in  Irish  dress,  only  distinguished  by 
red  crosses  on  back  and  breast;  and  so  the 
sight  was  seen  of  English  soldiers  in  Irish 
clothing  tearing  from  Irish  men  and  women 
their  Irish  garments  as  the  forbidden  dress 
of  traitors  and  rebels.  Some  official  of 
Elizabeth's  time  made  a  list  to  please  the 
English  of  a  few  names  of  Irishmen  trait- 
orously slain  by  other  Irishmen.  There  were 
murderers  who  had  been  brought  up  from 
childhood  in  an  English  house,  detached 
from  their  own  people;  others  were  sent 
out  to  save  their  lives  by  bringing  the  head 
of  a  "rebel."  The  temper  of  the  Irish 
people  is  better  seen  in  the  constant  fidelity 
with  which  the  whole  people  of  Ulster  and 
of  Munster  sheltered  and  protected  for  years 
O'Neill  and  Desmond  and  many  another 
leader  with  a  heavy  price  on  his  head.  Not 
the  poorest  herdsman  of  the  mountains 
touched  the  English  gold. 

The  military  difficulties  of  the  Irish,  how- 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  LAND      139 

ever,  were  such  as  to  baffle  skill  and  courage. 
England  had  been  drilled  by  the  kings  that 
conquered  her,  and  by  the  foreign  wars  she 
waged,  into  a  powerful  military  nation  by 
land  and  sea.  Newly  discovered  gunpowder 
gave  Henry  VII  the  force  of  artillery.  Henry 
VIII  had  formed  the  first  powerful  fleet. 
The  new-found  gold  of  Brazil,  the  wealth 
of  the  Spanish  main,  had  made  England 
immensely  rich.  In  this  moment  of  growing 
strength  the  whole  might  of  Great  Britain 
was  thrown  on  Ireland,  the  smaller  island. 
The  war,  too,  had  a  peculiar  animosity;  the 
fury  of  Protestant  fanaticism  was  the  cloak 
for  the  king's  ambition,  the  resolve  of  English 
traders  to  crush  Irish  competition,  the  greed 
of  prospective  planters.  No  motive  was 
lacking  to  increase  its  violence.  Ireland,  on 
the  other  hand,  never  conquered,  and  con- 
templating no  conquest  on  her  part,  was  not 
organised  as  an  aggressive  and  military 
nation.  Her  national  spirit  was  of  another 
type.  But  whatever  had  been  her  organisa- 
tion it  is  doubtful  whether  any  device  could 
have  saved  her  from  the  force  of  the  English 
invasion.    Dublin  could  never  be  closed  from 


140  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

within  against  enemies  coming  across  the 
sea.  The  island  was  too  small  to  give  any 
means  of  escape  to  defeated  armies  while 
they  were  preparing  for  a  new  defence.  They 
could  not  disappear,  for  example,  like  the 
Dutch  of  the  Cape  Colony  into  vast  desert 
regions  which  gave  them  shelter  while  they 
built  up  a  new  state.  Every  fugitive  within 
the  circuit  of  Ireland  could  be  presently  found 
and  hunted  down.  The  tribal  system,  too, 
which  the  Tudor  sovereigns  found,  was  no 
longer  in  full  possession  of  Ireland;  the  de- 
fence was  now  carried  on  not  by  a  tribal 
Gaelic  people  but  by  a  mixed  race,  half  feudal 
and  half  tribal  by  tradition.  But  it  was  the 
old  Irish  inheritance  of  national  freedom 
which  gave  to  Ireland  her  desperate  power 
of  defence,  so  that  it  was  only  after  such  pro- 
digious efforts  of  war  and  plantation  that  the 
bodies  of  her  people  were  subdued,  while  their 
minds  still  remained  free  and  unenslaved. 

If,  moreover,  the  Irish  system  had  dis- 
appeared so  had  the  English.  As  we  shall 
see  the  battle  between  the  feudal  tradition 
and  the  tribal  tradition  in  Ireland  had  ended 
in  the  violent  death  of  both. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   NATIONAL   FAITH   OF   THE   IRISH 
C.  1600-C.  1660 

We  have  seen  already  two  revivals  of 
Irish  life,  when  after  the  Danish  settlement, 
and  after  the  Norman,  the  native  civilisa- 
tion triumphed.  Even  now,  after  confisca- 
tions and  plantations,  the  national  tradition 
was  still  maintained  with  unswerving  fidelity. 
Amid  contempt,  persecution,  proscription, 
death,  the  outcast  Irish  cherished  their 
language  and  poetry,  their  history  and  law, 
with  the  old  pride  and  devotion.  In  that 
supreme  and  unselfish  loyalty  to  their  race 
they  found  dignity  in  humiliation  and  pa- 
tience in  disaster,  and  have  left,  out  of  the 
depths  of  their  poverty  and  sorrow,  one  of 
the  noblest  examples  in  history. 

Their  difficulties  were  almost  inconceiv- 
able.    The  great  dispersion  had  begun  of 

141 


142  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Irish  deported,  exiled,  or  cast  out  by  emigra- 
tion. Twenty  thousand  Irish  were  reported 
in  a  single  island  of  the  West  Indies  in  1643; 
thirty  thousand  were  said  to  be  wandering 
about  Europe;  in  1653  four  thousand  soldiers 
were  transported  to  Flanders  for  the  war  of 
the  king  of  Spain.  Numbers  went  to  seek 
the  education  forbidden  at  home  in  a  multi- 
tude of  Irish  colleges  founded  abroad.  They 
became  chancellors  of  universities,  profes- 
sors, high  officials  in  every  European  state 
—  a  Kerry  man  physician  to  the  king  of 
Poland;  another  Kerry  man  confessor  to  the 
queen  of  Portugal  and  sent  by  the  king  on 
an  embassy  to  Louis  XIV;  a  Donegal  man, 
O'Glacan,  physician  and  privy  councillor  to 
the  king  of  France,  and  a  very  famed  pro- 
fessor of  medicine  in  the  universities  of  Tou- 
louse and  Bologna  (1646-1655);  and  so  on. 
We  may  ask  whether  in  the  history  of  the 
world  there  was  cast  out  of  any  country  such 
genius,  learning,  and  industry,  as  the  Eng- 
lish flung,  as  it  were,  into  the  sea.  With  every 
year  the  number  of  exiles  grew.  "The  same 
to  me,"  wrote  one,  "are  the  mountain  or 
ocean,  Ireland  or  the  west  of  Spain;   I  have 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH      143 

shut  and  made  fast  the  gates  of  sorrow  over 
my  heart." 

As  for  the  Irish  at  home,  every  vestige  of 
their  tradition  was  doomed — their  religion 
was  forbidden,  and  the  Staff  of  Patrick  and 
Cross  of  Columcille  destroyed,  with  every 
other  national  relic;  their  schools  were  scat- 
tered, their  learned  men  hunted  down,  their 
books  burned;  native  industries  were  abol- 
ished; the  inauguration  chairs  of  their  chiefs 
were  broken  in  pieces,  and  the  law  of  the 
race  torn  up,  codes  of  inheritance,  of  land 
tenure,  of  contract  between  neighbours  or 
between  lord  and  man.  The  very  image  of 
Justice  which  the  race  had  fashioned  for 
itself  was  shattered.  Love  of  country  and 
every  attachment  of  race  and  history  became 
a  crime,  and  even  Irish  language  and  dress 
were  forbidden  under  penalty  of  outlawry 
or  excommunication.  "No  more  shall  any 
laugh  there,"  wrote  the  poet,  "or  children 
gambol;  music  is  choked,  the  Irish  language 
chained."  The  people  were  wasted  by  thou- 
sands in  life  and  in  death.  The  invaders 
supposed  the  degradation  of  the  Irish  race 
to  be  at  last  completed.     "Their  youth  and 


144  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

gentry  are  destroyed  in  the  rebellion  or  gone 
to  France,"  wrote  one:  "those  that  are 
left  are  destitute  of  horses,  arms  and  money, 
capacity  and  courage.  Five  in  six  of  the 
Irish  are  poor,  insignificant  slaves,  fit  for 
nothing  but  to  hew  wood  and  draw  water." 
Such  were  the  ignorant  judgments  of  the  new 
people,  an  ignorance  shameful  and  criminal. 

The  Irish,  meanwhile,  at  home  and  in 
the  dispersion,  were  seeking  to  save  out  of 
the  wreck  their  national  traditions.  Three 
centres  were  formed  of  this  new  patriotic 
movement — in  Rome,  in  Louvain,  and  in 
Ireland  itself. 

An  Irish  College  of  Franciscans  was  es- 
tablished in  Rome  (1625)  by  the  efforts  of 
Luke  Wadding,  a  Waterford  man,  divine  of 
the  Spanish  embassy  at  Rome.  The  Pope 
granted  to  the  Irish  the  church  of  St.  Isidore, 
patron  of  Madrid,  which  had  been  occupied 
by  Spanish  Franciscans.  Luke  Wadding, 
founder  and  head  of  the  college,  was  one  of 
the  most  extraordinary  men  of  his  time  for 
his  prodigious  erudition,  the  greatest  school- 
man of  that  age,  and  an  unchanging  and 
impassioned  patriot.     He  prepared  the  first 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH      145 

full  edition  of  the  works  of  the  great  Irish 
scholastic  philosopher  Duns  Scotus,  with  the 
help  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  Thomas 
Strange,  Anthony  Hickey,  John  Ponce  of 
Cork,  Hugh  MacCawell  of  Tyrone;  and 
projected  a  general  history  of  Ireland  for 
which  materials  were  being  collected  in  1628 
by  Thomas  Walsh,  archbishop  of  Cashel. 
The  College  was  for  the  service  of  "the 
whole  nation,"  for  all  Irishmen,  no  matter 
from  what  province,  "so  long  as  they  be 
Irish."  They  were  bound  by  rule  to  speak 
Irish,  and  an  Irish  book  was  read  during 
meals. 

No  spot  should  be  more  memorable  to 
Irishmen  than  the  site  of  the  Franciscan 
College  of  St.  Antony  of  Padua  at  Louvain. 
A  small  monastery  of  the  Freres  de  Charite 
contains  the  few  pathetic  relics  that  are  left 
of  the  noble  company  of  Irish  exiles  who 
gathered  there  from  1609  for  mutual  comfort 
and  support,  and  of  the  patriots  and  soldiers 
laid  to  rest  among  them — O'Neills,  O'Do- 
hertys,  O'Donnells,  Lynches,  Murphys,  and 
the  rest,  from  every  corner  of  Ireland. 
"Here  I  break  off  till  morning,"  wrote  one 


146  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

who  laboured  on  a  collection  of  Irish  poems 
from  1030  to  1630,  "and  I  in  gloom  and 
grief;  and  during  my  life's  length  unless 
only  that  I  might  have  one  look  at  Ireland." 
The  fathers  had  mostly  come  of  the  old 
Irish  literary  clans,  and  were  trained  in  the 
traditional  learning  of  their  race;  such  as 
Father  O'Mulloy,  distinguished  in  his  deep 
knowledge  of  the  later  poetic  metres,  of 
which  he  wrote  in  his  Latin  and  Irish  Gram- 
mar; or  Bona ventura  O'h'Eoghasa,  trained 
among  the  poets  of  Ireland,  who  left  "her 
holy  hills  of  beauty"  with  lamentation  to 
"try  another  trade"  with  the  Louvain 
brotherhood.  Steeped  in  Irish  lore  the 
Franciscans  carried  on  the  splendid  record 
of  the  Irish  clergy  as  the  twice-beloved 
guardians  of  the  inheritance  of  their  race. 
"Those  fathers,"  an  Irish  scholar  of  that 
day  wrote,  "stood  forward  when  she  (Ire- 
land) was  reduced  to  the  greatest  distress, 
nay,  threatened  with  certain  destruction,  and 
vowed  that  the  memory  of  the  glorious 
deeds  of  their  ancestors  should  not  be  con- 
signed to  the  same  earth  that  covered  the 
bodies  of  her  children  .  .  .  that  the  ancient 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH       147 

glory  of  Ireland  should  not  be  entombed  by 
the  same  convulsion  which  deprived  the 
Irish  of  the  lands  of  their  fathers  and  of 
all  their  property."  More  fortunate  than 
scholars  in  Ireland  thay  had  a  printing- 
press;  and  used  it  to  send  out  Irish  gram- 
mars, glossaries,  catechisms,  poems.  Hugh 
Mac  an-Bhaird  of  Donegal  undertook  to 
compile  the  Acta  Sanctorum,  for  which  a  lay- 
brother,  Michael  O'Clery,  collected  materials 
in  Ireland  for  ten  years,  and  Patrick  Fleming 
of  Louth  gathered  records  in  Europe.  At 
Hugh's  death,  in  1635,  the  task  was  taken  up 
by  Colgan,  born  at  Culdaff  on  the  shore  of 
Inishowen  (f  1658).  The  work  of  the  fathers 
was  in  darkness  and  sorrow.  "I  am  wasting 
and  perishing  with  grief,"  wrote  Hugh  Bourke 
to  Luke  Wadding,  "to  see  how  insensibly 
nigher  and  nigher  draws  the  catastrophe 
which  must  inflict  mortal  wounds  upon  our 
country." 

Ireland  herself,  however,  remained  the 
chief  home  of  historical  learning  in  the  broad 
national  sense.  Finghin  Mac  Carthy  Riab- 
hach,  a  Munster  chief,  skilled  in  old  and 
modern  Irish,  Latin,  English,  and  Spanish, 


148  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

wrote  a  history  of  Ireland  to  the  Norman 
invasion  in  the  beautiful  hand  taught  him  by 
Irish  scribes;  it  was  written  while  he  lay 
imprisoned  in  London  from  1589  to  1626, 
mad  at  times  through  despair.  One  of  a 
neighbouring  race  of  seafaring  chiefs,  O'Sulli- 
van  Beare,  an  emigrant  and  captain  in  the 
Spanish  navy,  published  in  1621  his  indignant 
recital  of  the  Elizabethan  wars  in  Ireland. 
It  was  in  hiding  from  the  president  of  Mun- 
ster,  in  the  wood  of  Aharlo,  that  Father 
Geoffrey  Keating  made  (before  1633)  his 
Irish  history  down  to  the  Norman  settlement 
— written  for  the  masses  in  clear  and  winning 
style,  the  most  popular  book  perhaps  ever 
written  in  Irish,  and  copied  throughout  the 
country  by  hundreds  of  eager  hands.  In  the 
north  meanwhile  Michael  O'Clery  and  his 
companions,  two  O'Clerys  of  Donegal, 
two  O'Maelchonaires  of  Roscommon,  and 
O'Duibhgeanain  of  Leitrim,  were  writing  the 
Annals  of  the  Four  Masters  (1632-6);  all  of 
them  belonging  to  hereditary  houses  of  chron- 
iclers. In  that  time  of  sorrow,  fearing  the 
destruction  of  every  record  of  his  people, 
O'Clery    travelled    through    all    Ireland    to 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH       149 

gather  up  what  could  be  saved,  "though  it 
was  difficult  to  collect  them  to  one  place." 
There  is  still  preserved  a  manuscript  by 
Caimhin,  abbot  of  Iniscaltra  about  650,  which 
was  given  to  O'Clery  by  the  neighbouring 
Mac  Brodys  who  had  kept  it  safe  for  a  thou- 
sand years.  The  books  were  carried  to  the  huts 
and  cottages  where  the  friars  of  Donegal  lived 
round  their  ruined  monastery;  from  them 
the  workers  had  food  and  attendance,  while 
Fergal  O'Gara,  a  petty  chieftain  of  Sligo 
descended  from  Olioll,  king  of  Munster  in 
260,  gave  them  a  reward  for  their  labours. 
Another  O'Clery  wrote  the  story  of  Aedh 
Ruadh  O'Donnell,  his  prisons  and  his  battles, 
and  the  calamity  to  Ireland  of  his  defeat. 
"Then  were  lost  besides  nobility  and  honour, 
generosity  and  great  deeds,  hospitality  and 
goodness,  courtesy  and  noble  birth,  polish 
and  bravery,  strength  and  courage,  valour 
and  constancy,  the  authority  and  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  Irish  of  Erin  to  the  end  of 
time." 

In  Gal  way  a  group  of  scholars  laid,  in 
Lynch' s  words,  "a  secure  anchorage"  for 
Irish  history.    Dr.  John  Lynch,  the  famous 


150  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

apologist  of  the  Irish,  wrote  there  his  his- 
torical defence  of  his  people.  To  spread 
abroad  their  history  he  translated  into  Latin 
Keating's  book.  For  the  same  purpose  his 
friend,  Tuileagna  O'Maelchonaire,  a  distin- 
guished Irish  scholar,  translated  the  Annals 
of  Ulster  into  English.  O'Flaherty  of  Moy- 
cullen  in  Galway,  a  man  of  great  learning, 
wrote  on  Irish  antiquities  "with  exactness, 
diligence  and  judgment."  "I  live,"  he  said, 
"a  banished  man  within  the  bounds  of  my 
native  soil,  a  spectator  of  others  enriched  by 
my  birthright,  an  object  of  condoling  to  my 
relations  and  friends,  and  a  condoler  of  their 
miseries."  His  land  confiscated  (1641), 
stripped  at  last  of  his  manuscripts  as  well 
as  of  his  other  goods,  he  died  in  miserable 
poverty  in  extreme  old  age  (1709).  To  Gal- 
way came  also  Dualtach  Mac  Firbis  (1585- 
1670),  of  a  family  that  had  been  time  out  of 
mind  hereditary  historians  in  north  Con- 
nacht.  He  learned  in  one  of  the  old  Irish 
schools  of  law  in  Tipperary  Latin,  English, 
and  Greek.  Amid  the  horrors  of  Cromwell's 
wars  he  carried  out  a  prodigious  work  on  the 
genealogies  of  the  clans,  the  greatest,  perhaps, 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH       151 

that  exists  in  any  country;  and  wrote  on 
their  saints,  their  kings,  their  writers,  on  the 
chronicles  and  on  the  laws;  in  moderate 
prosperity  and  in  extreme  adversity  con- 
stantly devoted  to  the  preservation  of  Irish 
history.  In  his  old  age  he  lived,  like  other 
Irish  scholars,  a  landless  sojourner  on  the 
estates  that  had  once  belonged  to  his  family 
and  race;  the  last  of  the  hereditary  senna- 
chies  of  Ireland  he  wandered  on  foot  from 
house  to  house,  every  Irish  door  opened  to 
him  for  his  learning  after  their  undying 
custom,  till  at  the  age  of  eighty-five  he  was 
murdered  by  a  Crofton  when  he  was  resting 
in  a  house  on  his  way  to  Dublin.  In  Con- 
nacht,  too,  lived  Tadhg  O'Roddy  of  Leitrim, 
a  diligent  collector  of  Irish  manuscripts, 
who  gathered  thirty  books  of  law,  and  many 
others  of  philosophy,  poetry,  physic,  gene- 
alogies, mathematics,  romances,  and  history; 
and  defended  against  the  English  the  char- 
acter of  the  old  law  and  civilisation  of 
Ireland. 

It  would  be  long  to  tell  of  the  workers  in 
all  the  Irish  provinces  — the  lawyers  hiding 
in  their  bosoms  the  genealogies  and  tenures 


152  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  their  clans  —  the  scribes  writing  annals 
and  genealogies,  to  be  carried,  perhaps,  when 
Irishmen  gathered  as  for  a  hurling-match 
and  went  out  to  one  of  their  old  places  of 
assembly,  there  to  settle  their  own  matters 
by  their  ancient  law.  No  printing-press 
could  be  set  up  among  the  Irish;  they  were 
driven  back  on  oral  tradition  and  laborious 
copying  by  the  pen.  Thus  for  about  a 
hundred  years  Keating's  History  was  passed 
from  hand  to  hand  after  the  old  manner  in 
copies  made  by  devoted  Irish  hands  (one 
of  them  a  "farmer")*  in  Leitrim,  Tipperary, 
Kildare,  Clare,  Limerick,  Kilkenny,  all  over 
the  country;  it  was  only  in  1723  that  Dermot 
O'Conor  translated  it  into  English  and  printed 
it  in  Dublin.  It  is  amazing  how  amid  the 
dangers  of  the  time  scribes  should  be  found 
to  re-write  and  re-edit  the  mass  of  manu- 
scripts, those  that  were  lost  and  those  that 
have  escaped. 

The  poets  were  still  the  leaders  of  national 
patriotism.  The  great  "Contention  of  the 
Poets" — "Iomarbhagh  na  bhfiledh" — a  bat- 
tle that  lasted  for  years  between  the  bards  of 
the  O'Briens  and  the  O'Donnells,  in  which 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH       153 

the  bards  of  every  part  of  Ireland  joined — 
served  to  rouse  the  pride  of  the  Irish  in 
their  history  amid  their  calamities  under 
James  I.  The  leader  of  the  argument,  Tadhg 
Mac  Daire,  lord  of  an  estate  with  a  castle  as 
chief  poet  of  Thomond,  was  hurled  over  a 
cliff  in  his  old  age  by  a  Cromwellian  soldier 
with  the  shout,  "Say  your  rann  now,  little 
man!"  Tadhg  O'h'Uiginn  of  Sligo  (tl617), 
Eochaidh  O'h'Eoghasa  of  Fermanagh,  were 
the  greatest  among  very  many.  Bards  whose 
names  have  often  been  forgotten  spread  the 
poems  of  the  Ossianic  cycle,  and  wrote  verses 
of  several  kinds  into  which  a  new  gloom  and 
despair  entered — 

"  Though  yesterday  seemed  to  me  long  and  ill, 
Yet  longer  still  was  this  dreary  day." 

The  bards  were  still  for  a  time  trained  in 
"the  schools" — low  thatched  buildings  shut 
away  by  a  sheltering  wood,  where  students 
came  for  six  months  of  the  year.  None  were 
admitted  who  could  not  read  and  write,  and 
use  a  good  memory;  none  but  those  who  had 
come  of  a  bardic  tribe,  and  of  a  far  district, 
lest  they  should  be  distracted  by  friends  and 


154  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

relations.  The  Scottish  Gaels  and  the  Irish 
were  united  as  of  old  in  the  new  literature; 
Irish  bards  and  harpers  were  as  much  at  home 
in  the  Highlands  and  in  the  Isles  as  in  Ireland, 
and  the  poems  of  the  Irish  bards  were  as 
popular  there  as  in  Munster.  Thus  the  unity 
of  feeling  of  the  whole  race  was  preserved 
and  the  bards  still  remained  men  who  be- 
longed to  their  country  rather  than  to  a 
clan  or  territory.  But  with  the  exile  of  the 
Irish  chiefs,  with  the  steady  ruin  of  "the 
schools,"  poets  began  to  throw  aside  the  old 
intricate  metres  and  the  old  words  no  longer 
understood,  and  turned  to  the  people,  put- 
ting away  "dark  difficult  language"  to  bring 
literature  to  the  common  folk:  there  were 
even  translations  made  for  those  who  were 
setting  their  children  to  learn  the  English 
instead  of  their  native  tongue.  Born  of  an 
untold  suffering,  a  burst  of  melody  swept 
over  Ireland,  scores  and  scores  of  new  and 
brilliant  metres,  perhaps  the  richest  attempt 
to  convey  music  in  words  ever  made  by  man. 
In  that  unfathomed  experience,  they  tell 
how  seeking  after  Erin  over  all  obstacles, 
they  found  her  fettered  and  weeping,  and 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH       155 

for  their  loyalty  she  gave  them  the  last  gift 
left  to  her,  the  light  of  poetry. 

In  Leinster  of  the  English,  "the  cemetery 
of  the  valorous  Gael,"  Irish  learning  had  a 
different  story.  There  it  seemed  for  a  moment 
that  it  might  form  a  meeting-point  between 
the  new  race  and  the  old,  joining  together, 
as  the  Catholics  put  it,  "our  commonwealth 
men,"  a  people  compounded  of  many  nations, 
some  Irish  by  birth  and  descent,  others  by 
descent  only,  others  neither  by  descent  nor 
by  birth  but  by  inhabitation  of  one  soil; 
but  all  parts  of  one  body  politic,  acknowl- 
edging one  God,  conjoined  together  in  alle- 
giance to  one  and  the  same  sovereign,  united 
in  the  fruition  of  the  selfsame  air,  and  tied 
in  subsistence  upon  this  our  natural  soil 
whereupon  we  live  together. 

A  tiny  group  of  scholars  in  Dublin  had 
begun  to  study  Irish  history.  Sir  James 
Ware  (1594-1666),  born  there  of  an  English 
family,  "conceived  a  great  love  for  his  native 
country  and  could  not  bear  to  see  it  aspersed 
by  some  authors,  which  put  him  upon  doing 
it  all  the  justice  he  could  in  his  writings." 
He  spared  no  cost  in  buying  valuable  manu- 


156  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

scripts,  kept  an  Irish  secretary  to  translate, 
and  employed  for  eleven  years  the  great 
scholar  O'Flaherty  whose  help  gave  to  his 
work  its  chief  value.  Ussher,  archbishop  of 
Armagh,  also  born  in  Dublin,  devoted  him- 
self to  the  study  of  Irish  antiquities.  Baron 
d  'Aungier,  Master  of  the  Rolls,  put  into  writ- 
ing every  point  which  he  could  find  in  original 
documents  "which  for  antiquity  or  singularity 
might  interest  this  country."  The  enthusi- 
asm of  learning  drew  together  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  Anglo-Irish  and  Irish.  All  these 
men  were  in  communication  with  Luke 
Wadding  in  Rome  through  Thomas  Strange 
the  Franciscan,  his  intimate  friend;  they 
sent  their  own  collections  of  records  to  help 
him  in  his  Catholic  history  of  Irish  saints, 
"being  desirous  that  Wadding's  book  should 
see  the  light,"  wishing  "to  help  him  in  his 
work  for  Ireland,"  begging  to  see  "the  veriest 
trifle"  that  he  wrote.  The  noblest  English 
scholar  was  Bishop  Bedell,  who  while  pro- 
vost established  an  Irish  lecture  in  Trinity 
College,  had  the  chapter  during  commons 
read  in  Irish,  and  employed  a  Sheridan  of 
Cavan  to  translate  the  Old  Testament  into 


NATIONAL  FAITH  OF  IRISH      157 

Irish.  As  bishop  he  braved  the  anger  of  the 
government  by  declaring  the  hardships  of 
the  Catholic  Irish,  and  by  circulating  a  cate- 
chism in  English  and  Irish.  Bitterly  did 
Ussher  reproach  him  for  such  a  scandal  at 
which  the  professors  of  the  gospel  did  all 
take  offence,  and  for  daring  to  adventure  that 
which  his  brethren  had  been  "so  long  abuild- 
ing,"  the  destruction  of  the  Irish  language. 
The  Irish  alone  poured  out  their  love  and 
gratitude  to  Bedell;  they  protected  him  in 
the  war  of  1641;  the  insurgent  chieftains 
fired  volleys  over  his  grave  paying  homage 
to  his  piety;  "sit  anima  mea  cum  Bedello!" 
cried  a  priest.  He  showed  what  one  just 
man,  caring  for  the  people  and  speaking  to 
them  in  their  own  tongue,  could  do  in  a  few 
years  to  abolish  the  divisions  of  race  and 
religion. 

The  light,  however,  that  had  risen  in  Dub- 
lin was  extinguished.  Sympathies  for  the 
spirit  of  Irishmen  in  their  long  history  were 
quenched  by  the  greed  for  land,  the  passion 
of  commerce,  and  the  fanaticism  of  ascend- 
ancy and  dominion. 


CHAPTER  X 

RULE  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PARLIAMENT 

1640-1750 

The  aim  which  English  kings  had  set  before 
them  for  the  last  four  hundred  years  seemed 
now  fulfilled.  The  land  was  theirs,  and  the 
dominion.  But  the  victory  turned  to  dust 
and  ashes  in  their  hands.  The  "royal  in- 
heritance" of  so  many  hopes  had  practically 
disappeared;  for  if  the  feudal  system  which 
was  to  give  the  king  the  land  of  Ireland  had 
destroyed  the  tribal  system,  it  was  itself  dead; 
decaying  and  intolerable  in  England,  it  could 
no  longer  be  made  to  serve  in  Ireland.  Hen- 
ry's dream  of  a  royal  army  from  Ireland, 
"a  sword  and  flay"  at  the  king's  use  against 
his  subjects  in  Great  Britain,  perished; 
Charles  I  did  indeed  propose  to  use  the  Irish 
fighting-men  to  smite  into  obedience  England 
and  Scotland,  but  no  king  of  England  tried 
that  experiment  again.  James  II  looked  to 
158 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      159 

Ireland,  as  in  Henry's  scheme,  for  a  safe  place 
of  refuge  to  fly  to  in  danger;  that,  again,  no 
king  of  England  tried  a  second  time.  As  for 
the  king's  revenues  and  profits,  the  dream  of 
so  many  centuries,  that  too  vanished:  con- 
fiscations old  and  new  which  the  English 
parliament  allowed  the  Crown  for  Irish 
government  left  the  king  none  the  richer,  and 
after  1692  no  longer  sufficed  even  for  Irish 
expenses.  The  title  of  "King  of  Ireland" 
which  Henry  VIII  had  proclaimed  in  his  own 
right  with  such  high  hopes,  bred  out  of  its 
original  deception  other  deceptions  deeper  and 
blacker  than  the  first.  The  sovereign  saw  his 
absolute  tyranny  gradually  taken  out  of  his 
hands  by  the  parliament  and  middle  class  for 
their  own  benefit;  the  rule  of  the  king  was 
passing,  the  rule  of  the  English  parliament 
had  begun. 

Thus  past  history  was  as  it  were  wiped  out. 
Everything  in  Ireland  was  to  be  new.  The 
social  order  was  now  neither  feudal  nor  tribal, 
nor  anything  known  before.  Other  methods 
had  been  set  up,  without  custom,  tradition, 
or  law  behind  them.  There  were  two  new 
classes,  English  planters  and  Irish  toilers.  No 


160  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

old  ties  bound  them,  and  no  new  charities. 
"From  the  Anglo-Irish  no  man  of  special 
sanctity  as  yet  is  known  to  have  sprung," 
observed  a  Gael  of  that  day.  Ancient  patri- 
mony had  fallen.  The  new  aristocracy  was 
that  of  the  strong  hand  and  the  exploiter's 
greed.  Ordinary  restraints  of  civilised  so- 
cieties were  not  yet  born  in  this  pushing 
commercial  throng,  where  the  scum  of  Great 
Britain,  broken  men  or  men  flying  from  the 
law,  hastened— "hoping  to  be  without  fear 
of  man's  justice  in  a  land  where  there  was 
nothing,  or  but  little  as  yet,  of  the  fear  of 
God."  Ireland  was  left  absolutely  without 
guides  or  representatives.  There  were  no 
natural  leaders  of  the  country  among  the 
new  men,  each  fighting  for  his  own  hand;  the 
English  government  permitted  none  among 
the  Irish. 

England  too  was  being  made  new,  with 
much  turmoil  and  confusion — an  England 
where  kings  were  yielding  to  parliaments,  and 
parliaments  were  being  subdued  to  the  rising 
commercial  classes.  The  idea  of  a  separate 
royal  power  and  profit  had  disappeared  and 
instead  of  it  had  come  the  rule  and  profit  of 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      161 

the  parliament  of  England,  and  of  her  noble- 
men, ecclesiastics,  and  traders  in  general. 

This  new  rule  marked  the  first  revolution  in 
the  English  government  of  Ireland  which  had 
happened  since  Henry  II  sat  in  his  Dublin 
palace.  By  the  ancient  constitution  assured 
by  compacts  and  grants  since  English  laws 
were  first  brought  into  that  country,  Ireland 
was  united  to  the  Crown  of  England  as  a  free 
and  distinct  kingdom,  with  the  right  of  hold- 
ing parliaments  subject  only  to  the  king  and 
his  privy  council;  statutes  of  the  English 
parliament  had  not  force  of  law  there  until 
they  had  been  re-enacted  in  Ireland — which 
indeed  was  necessary  by  the  very  theory  of 
parliaments,  for  there  were  no  Irish  repre- 
sentatives in  the  English  Houses.  Of  its  mere 
will  the  parliament  of  England  now  took  to 
itself  authority  to  make  laws  for  Ireland  in  as 
free  and  uncontrolled  a  manner  as  if  no  Irish 
parliament  existed.  The  new  ruling  classes 
had  neither  experience  nor  training.  Regard- 
less of  any  legal  technicalities  they  simply 
usurped  a  power  unlimited  and  despotic  over 
a  confused  and  shattered  Ireland.  Now  was 
seen  the  full  evil  of  government  from  over-sea, 


162  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

where  before  a  foreign  tribunal,  sitting  at  a 
distance,  ignorant  and  prejudiced,  the  subject 
people  had  no  voice;  they  could  dispute  no 
lie,  and  could  affirm  no  truth. 

This  despotism  grew  up  regardless  of  any 
theory  of  law  or  constitution.  The  intention 
was  unchanged — the  taking  of  all  Irish  land, 
the  rooting  out  of  the  old  race  from  the  coun- 
try. Adventurers  were  tempted  by  Irish 
wealth;  what  had  once  been  widely  diffused 
among  the  Irish  tribes  was  gathered  into  the 
hands  of  a  few  aliens,  who  ruthlessly  wasted 
the  land  for  their  own  great  enrichment.  Enor- 
mous profits  fell  to  planters,  who  could  get 
three  times  as  much  gain  from  an  Irish  as 
from  an  English  estate  by  a  fierce  exploiting 
of  the  natural  resources  of  the  island  and  of  its 
cheap  outlawed  labour.  Forests  of  oak  were 
hastily  destroyed  for  quick  profits;  woods 
were  cut  down  for  charcoal  to  smelt  the  iron 
which  was  carried  down  the  rivers  in  cunning 
Irish  boats,  and  what  had  cost  £10  in  labour 
and  transport  sold  at  £17  in  London.  The 
last  furnace  was  put  out  in  Kerry  when  the 
last  wood  had  been  destroyed.  Where  the 
English  adventurer  passed  he  left  the  land  as 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      163 

naked  as  if  a  forest  fire  had  swept  over  the 
country. 

For  the  exploiter's  rage,  for  the  waster's 
madness,  more  land  was  constantly  needed. 
Three  provinces  had  been  largely  planted  by 
1620 — one  still  remained.  By  a  prodigious 
fraud  James  I,  and  after  him  Charles  I  in 
violation  of  his  solemn  promise,  proposed  to 
extirpate  the  Irish  from  Connacht.  The 
maddened  people  were  driven  to  arms  in  1641. 
The  London  parliament  which  had  just 
opened  the  quarrel  with  the  king  which  was  to 
end  in  his  beheading,  seized  their  opportunity 
in  Ireland.  Instantly  London  City,  and  a 
House  of  Commons  consisting  mainly  of  Puri- 
tan adventurers,  joined  in  speculations  to  buy 
up  "traitors'  lands,"  openly  sold  in  London  at 
£100  for  a  thousand  acres  in  Ulster  or  for  six 
hundred  in  Munster,  and  so  on  in  every 
province.  It  was  a  cheap  bargain,  the  value 
of  forfeited  lands  being  calculated  by  parlia- 
ment later  at  £2,500  for  a  thousand  acres. 
The  more  rebels  the  more  forfeitures,  and 
every  device  of  law  and  fraud  was  used  to  fling 
the  whole  people  into  the  war,  either  in  fact  or 
in  name,  and  so  destroy  the  claim  of  the  whole 


164  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  them  to  their  lands.  "Wild  Irishmen," 
the  English  said  to  one  another,  "had  nothing 
but  the  human  form  to  show  that  they  were 
men."  Letters  were  forged  and  printed  in 
England,  purporting  to  give  Irish  news;  dis- 
countenanced by  parliament,  they  still  mark 
the  first  experiment  to  appeal  in  this  way  to 
London  on  the  Irish  question.  Parliament 
did  its  utmost  to  make  the  contest  a  war  of 
extermination :  it  ended,  in  fact,  in  the  death 
of  little  less  than  half  the  population. 

The  Commons'  auction  of  Irishmen's  lands 
in  1641,  their  conduct  of  a  war  of  distinguished 
ferocity,  these  were  the  acts  by  which  the 
Irish  first  knew  government  by  an  English 
parliament.  The  memory  of  the  black  curse 
of  Cromwell  lives  among  the  people.  He 
remains  in  Ireland  as  the  great  exemplar  of 
inhuman  cruelties,  standing  amid  these  scenes 
of  woe  with  praises  to  God  for  such  manifest 
evidence  of  His  inspiration.  The  speculators 
got  their  lands,  outcast  women  and  children 
lay  on  the  wayside  devoured  by  wolves  and 
birds  of  prey.  By  order  of  parliament  (1653) 
over  20,000  destitute  men,  women,  and 
children  from  twelve  years  were  sold  into  the 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      165 

service  of  English  planters  in  Virginia  and  the 
Carolinas.  Slave-dealers  were  let  loose  over 
the  country,  and  the  Bristol  merchants  did 
good  business.  With  what  bitter  irony  an 
Irishman  might  contrast  the  "civilisation" 
of  the  English  and  the  "barbarism"  of  the 
Irish — if  we  talk,  he  said,  about  civility  and  a 
civil  manner  of  contract  of  selling  and  buying, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  Anglo-Irish  born  in 
cities  have  had  more  opportunity  to  acquire 
civility  than  the  Old  Irish;  but  if  the  question 
be  of  civility,  of  good  manners,  of  liberality, 
of  hospitality,  and  charity  towards  all,  these 
virtues  dwelt  among  the  Irish. 

Kings  were  restored  to  carry  out  the  will 
of  parliament.  Charles  II  at  their  bidding 
ignored  the  treaty  of  his  father  that  the  Irish 
who  submitted  should  return  to  their  lands 
(1661):  at  the  mere  appearance  of  keeping 
promise  to  a  few  hundred  Catholic  landowners 
out  of  thousands,  the  Protestant  planters  sent 
out  their  threats  of  insurrection.  A  deeper 
misery  was  reached  when  William  III  led  his 
army  across  the  Boyne  and  the  Shannon 
(1690).  In  grave  danger  and  difficulty  he  was 
glad  to  win  peace  by  the  Treaty  of  Limerick, 


166  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

in  which  the  Irish  were  promised  the  quiet 
exercise  of  their  religion.  The  Treaty  was 
immediately  broken.  The  English  parliament 
objected  to  any  such  encouragement  of  Irish 
Papists,  and  demanded  that  no  pardons  should 
be  given  or  estates  divided  save  by  their 
advice,  and  William  said  no  word  to  uphold 
the  public  faith.  The  pledge  of  freedom  of 
worship  was  exchanged  for  the  most  infamous 
set  of  penal  laws  ever  placed  on  a  Statute- 
book. 

The  breaking  of  the  Treaty  of  Limerick, 
conspicuous  among  the  perfidies  to  Ireland, 
inaugurated  the  century  of  settled  rule 
by  the  parliament  of  England  (1691-1782). 
Its  first  care  was  to  secure  to  English  Prot- 
estants their  revenues  in  Ireland;  the  plant- 
ers, one-fourth  of  the  people  of  Ireland,  were 
established  as  owners  of  four-fifths  of  Irish 
soil;  and  one-half  of  their  estates,  the  land 
confiscated  under  Cromwell  and  William, 
they  held  by  the  despotic  grant  of  the  English 
parliament.  This  body,  having  outlawed 
four  thousand  Irishmen,  and  seized  a  million 
and  a  half  of  their  acres,  proceeded  to  crush 
the  liberties  of  its  own  English  settlers  by 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      167 

simply  issuing  statutes  for  Ireland  of  its  sole 
authority.  The  acts  were  as  tyrannical  in 
their  subject  as  in  their  origin.  One  (1691), 
which  ordered  that  no  Catholic  should  sit  in 
the  Irish  Houses,  deprived  three-fourths  of 
the  people  of  representatives,  and  left  to  one- 
fourth  alone  the  right  of  citizens.  Some 
English  judges  decided,  without  and  against 
Irish  legal  opinion,  that  the  privy  councils  in 
Dublin  and  London  had  power  to  alter  Irish 
bills  before  sending  them  to  the  king.  "If  an 
angel  came  from  heaven  that  was  a  privy 
councillor  I  would  not  trust  my  liberty  with 
him  one  moment,"  said  an  English  member 
of  that  time. 

All  liberties  were  thus  rooted  out.  The 
planters'  rights  were  overthrown  as  pitilessly 
as  those  of  the  Irish  they  had  expelled. 
Molyneux,  member  for  Dublin  university,  set 
forth  in  1698  the  "Case  of  Ireland."  He 
traced  its  constitution  for  five  centuries; 
showed  that  historically  there  had  never  been 
a  "conquest"  of  Ireland,  and  that  all  its 
civil  liberties  were  grounded  on  compact  and 
charter;  and  declared  that  his  native  land 
shared  the  claims  of  all  mankind  to  justice. 


168  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

"To  tax  me  without  consent  is  little  better,  if 
at  all,  than  downright  robbing  me.  I  am  sure 
the  great  patriots  of  liberty  and  property,  the 
free  people  of  England,  cannot  think  of  such 
a  thing  but  with  abhorrence."  "There  may 
be  ill  consequences,"  he  cried,  "if  the  Irish 
come  to  think  their  rights  and  liberties  were 
taken  away,  their  parliaments  rendered  nuga- 
tory, and  their  lives  and  fortunes  left  to 
depend  on  the  will  of  a  legislature  wherein 
they  are  not  parties."  The  "ill  consequences  " 
were  seen  seventy  years  later  when  Molyneux' 
book  became  the  text-book  of  Americans  in 
their  rising  against  English  rule;  and  when 
Anglo-Irish  defenders  of  their  own  liberties 
were  driven  to  make  common  cause  with 
their  Irish  compatriots — for  "no  one  or  more 
men,"  said  Molyneux,  "can  by  nature  chal- 
lenge any  right,  liberty,  or  freedom,  or  any 
ease  in  his  property,  estate,  or  conscience 
which  all  other  men  have  not  an  equally  just 
claim  to."  But  that  day  was  far  off.  For 
the  moment  the  Irish  parliament  deserved  and 
received  entire  contempt  from  England.  The 
gentry  who  had  accepted  land  and  power  by 
the  arbitrary  will  of  the  English  House  of 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      169 

Commons  dared  not  dispute  the  tyranny  that 
was  the  warrant  of  their  property:  "I  hope," 
was  the  ironic  answer,  "the  honourable  mem- 
ber will  not  question  the  validity  of  his  title." 
With  such  an  argument  at  hand,  the  English 
parliament  had  no  need  of  circumspection  or 
of  soft  words.  It  simply  condemned  Moly- 
neux  and  his  remonstrance,  demanded  of  the 
king  to  maintain  the  subordination  of  Ireland, 
and  to  order  the  journals  of  its  parliaments  to 
be  laid  before  the  Houses  at  Westminster; 
and  on  the  same  day  required  of  him,  since 
the  Irish  were  "dependent  on  and  protected 
by  England  in  the  enjoyment  of  all  they  had," 
to  forbid  them  to  continue  their  woollen 
trade,  but  leave  it  entire  to  England.  In  1719 
it  declared  its  power  at  all  times  to  make 
laws  which  should  bind  the  people  of  Ireland. 
Thus  an  English  parliament  which  had 
fought  for  its  own  liberties  established  a 
hierarchy  of  tyranny  for  Ireland:  the  Anglo- 
Irish  tied  under  servitude  to  England,  and  the 
Irish  chained  under  an  equal  bondage  to  the 
Anglo-Irish.  As  one  of  the  governors  of  Ire- 
land wrote  a  hundred  years  later,  "I  think 
Great  Britain  may  still  easily  manage  the 


170  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Protestants,  and  the  Protestants  the  Catho- 
lics." Such  was  the  servile  position  of  English 
planters.  They  had  made  their  bargain.  To 
pay  the  price  of  wealth  and  ascendency  they 
sold  their  own  freedom  and  the  rights  of  their 
new  country.  The  smaller  number,  said 
Burke,  were  placed  in  power  at  the  expense  of 
the  civil  liberties  and  properties  of  the  far 
greater,  and  at  the  expense  of  the  civil  lib- 
erties of  the  whole. 

Ireland  was  now  degraded  to  a  subject 
colony.  The  government  never  proposed 
that  Englishmen  in  Ireland  should  be  on 
equal  terms  with  English  in  England.  Strin- 
gent arrangements  were  made  to  keep  Ireland 
low.  The  Habeas  Corpus  Act  was  suspended 
while  the  English  parliament  ruled.  Judges 
were  removable  at  pleasure.  Precautions 
were  taken  against  the  growth  of  "an  Irish 
interest."  By  a  variety  of  devices  the  parlia- 
ment of  English  Protestants  was  debased  to  a 
corrupt  and  ignoble  servitude.  So  deep  was 
their  subjection  that  Ireland  was  held  in 
England  to  be  "no  more  than  a  remote  part 
of  their  dominion,  which  was  not  accustomed 
to  figure  on  the  theatre  of  politics."    Govern- 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      171 

ment  by  Dublin  Castle  was  directed  in  the 
sole  interest  of  England;  the  greatest  posts  in 
the  Castle,  the  Law,  the  Church,  were  given 
to  Englishmen,  "king-fishers,"  as  the  nick- 
name went  of  the  churchmen.  "I  fear  much 
blame  here,"  said  the  English  premier  in  1774, 
"...  if  I  consent  to  part  with  the  disposal 
of  these  offices  which  have  been  so  long  and 
so  uniformly  bestowed  upon  members  of  the 
British  parliament."  Castle  officials  were 
expected  to  have  a  single  view  to  English 
interests.  In  speeches  from  the  throne 
governors  of  Ireland  formally  spoke  of  the 
Irish  people,  the  majority  of  their  subjects, 
as  "the  common  enemy";  they  were  scarcely 
less  suspicious  of  the  English  Protestants; 
"it  is  worth  turning  in  your  mind,"  one  wrote 
to  Pitt,  "how  the  violence  of  both  parties 
might  be  turned  on  this  occasion  to  the 
advancement  of  England." 

One  tyranny  begot  another.  Irish  mem- 
bers, having  no  liberties  to  defend,  and  no 
country  to  protect,  devoted  themselves  to  the 
security  of  their  property — its  security  and 
increase.  All  was  quiet.  There  was  no  fear 
in  Ireland  of  a  rising  for  the  Pretender.    The 


172  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Irish,  true  to  their  ancient  horror  of  violence 
for  religion,  never  made  a  religious  war,  and 
never  desired  that  which  was  ever  repugnant 
to  the  Irish  spirit,  temporal  ascendency  for  a 
spiritual  faith.  Their  only  prayer  was  for 
freedom  in  worship — that  same  prayer  which 
Irish  Catholics  had  presented  in  the  parlia- 
ment of  James  I  (1613),  "indented  with  sor- 
row, signed  with  tears,  and  delivered  in  this 
house  of  peace  and  liberty  with  our  disarmed 
hands."  Protestants  had  never  cause  for 
fear  in  Ireland  on  religious  grounds.  In  queen 
Mary's  persecution  Protestants  flying  from 
England  had  taken  shelter  in  Ireland  among 
Irish  Catholics,  and  not  a  hand  was  raised 
against  them  there.  Bitter  as  were  the  poets 
against  the  English  exterminators,  no  Irish 
curse  has  been  found  against  the  Protestant 
for  his  religion,  even  through  the  black  time 
of  the  penal  laws.  The  parliament,  however, 
began  a  series  of  penal  laws  against  Irish 
Catholics.  They  were  forbidden  the  use  of 
their  religion,  almost  every  means  of  liveli- 
hood, every  right  of  a  citizen,  every  family 
affection.  Their  possessions  were  scattered, 
education  was  denied  them,  when  a  father 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      173 

died  his  children  were  handed  over  to  a  Prot- 
estant guardian.  "The  law,"  said  the  leading 
judges,  "does  not  suppose  any  such  person  to 
exist  as  an  Irish  Roman  Catholic."  They 
were  only  recognised  "for  repression  and 
punishment."  Statutes  framed  to  demoralise 
and  debase  the  people,  so  as  to  make  them  for 
ever  unfit  for  self-government,  pursued  the 
souls  of  the  victims  to  the  second  and  third 
generation.  In  this  ferocious  violence  the 
law-makers  were  not  moved  by  fanaticism. 
Their  rapacity  was  not  concerned  with  the 
religion  of  the  Irish,  but  only  with  their  prop- 
erty and  industry.  The  conversion  of  a 
Catholic  was  not  greatly  desired;  so  long  as 
there  were  Papists  the  planters  could  secure 
their  lands,  and  use  them  as  slaves,  "worse 
than  negroes."  Laws  which  would  have 
sounded  infamous  if  directed  openly  to  the 
seizing  of  property,  took  on  a  sacred  character 
as  a  religious  effort  to  suppress  false  doctrine. 
One-fiftieth  part  of  Ireland  was  all  that  was 
left  to  Irish  Catholics,  utterly  excluded  for 
ever  from  the  inheritance  of  their  fathers. 
"One  single  foot  of  land  there  is  not  left  us," 
rose  their  lament,  "no,  not  what  one  may 


174  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

make  his  bed  upon."  "See  all  that  are  with- 
out a  bed  except  the  furze  of  the  mountains, 
the  bent  of  the  curragh,  and  the  bog-myrtle 
beneath  their  bodies.  Under  frost,  under 
snow,  under  rain,  under  blasts  of  wind,  with- 
out a  morsel  to  eat  but  watercress,  green  grass, 
sorrel  of  the  mountain,  or  clover  of  the  hills. 
Och!  my  pity  to  see  their  nobles  forsaken!" 
And  yet,  in  spite  of  this  success,  the  Anglo- 
Irish  had  made  a  bad  bargain.  Cut  off  from 
their  fellow-countrymen,  having  renounced 
the  right  to  have  a  country,  the  Protestant 
land-hunters  were  no  more  respected  in 
England  than  in  Ireland.  The  English 
parliament  did  with  them  as  it  chose.  Their 
subjection  tempted  the  commercial  classes. 
To  safeguard  their  own  profits  of  commerce 
and  industry  English  traders  made  statutes 
to  annihilate  Irish  competition.  They  for- 
bade carrying  of  cattle  or  dairy  stuff  to  Eng- 
land, they  forbade  trade  in  soap  or  candles; 
in  cloth,  in  glass,  in  linen  save  of  the  coarsest 
kind;  the  increase  of  corn  was  checked; 
it  was  proposed  to  stop  Irish  fisheries.  The 
wool  which  they  might  not  use  at  home  must 
be  exported  to  England  alone.    They  might 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      175 

not  build  ships.  From  old  time  Ireland  had 
traded  across  the  Gaulish  sea:  her  ports  had 
seen  the  first  discoverers  of  America.  But 
now  all  her  great  harbours  to  the  west  with 
its  rising  American  trade  were  closed:  no 
merchant  ship  crossing  the  Atlantic  was 
allowed  to  load  at  an  Irish  port  or  to  un- 
load. The  abundance  of  harbours,  once  so 
full  of  commerce,  were  now,  said  Swift,  "of 
no  more  use  to  us  than  a  beautiful  prospect 
to  a  man  shut  up  in  a  dungeon."  In  1720  all 
trade  was  at  a  stand,  the  country  bare  of 
money,  "want  and  misery  in  every  face."  It 
was  unfortunate,  Englishmen  said,  that  Ire- 
land had  been  by  the  act  of  God  doomed  to 
poverty — so  isolated  in  geographical  position, 
so  lacking  in  industrial  resources,  inhabited  by 
a  people  so  indolent  in  tillage,  and  unfitted  by 
their  religion  to  work.  Meanwhile  they  suc- 
cessfully pushed  their  own  business  in  a  coun- 
try which  they  allowed  to  make  nothing  for 
itself.  Their  manufacturers  sent  over  yearly 
two  millions  of  their  goods,  more  than  to  any 
other  country  save  their  American  colonies, 
and  took  the  raw  material  of  Ireland,  while 
Irish  workers  were  driven  out  on  the  hillsides 


176  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

to  starve.  The  planters'  parliament  looked 
on  in  barren  helplessness.  They  had  no 
nation  behind  them.  They  could  lead  no 
popular  resistance.  They  had  no  call  to 
public  duty.  And  the  English  knew  it  well. 
Ministers  heaped  up  humiliations;  they 
quartered  on  Irish  revenues  all  the  pensioners 
that  could  not  safely  be  proposed  to  a  free 
parliament  in  England — the  mistresses  of 
successsive  kings  and  their  children,  German 
relations  of  the  Hanoverians,  useful  politi- 
cians covered  by  other  names,  a  queen  of 
Denmark  banished  for  misconduct,  a  Sar- 
dinian ambassador  under  a  false  title,  a 
trailing  host  of  Englishmen — pensions  stead- 
ily increasing  from  £30,000  to  over  £89,000. 
Some  £600,000  was  at  last  yearly  sent  over 
to  England  for  absentees,  pensions,  govern- 
ment annuities,  and  the  like.  A  parliament 
servile  and  tyrannical  could  not  even  pre- 
tend to  urge  on  the  government  that  its 
measures,  as  a  patriot  said,  should  sometimes 
"diverge  towards  public  utility."  It  had 
abandoned  all  power  save  that  of  increasing 
the  sorrows  of  the  people. 

A  double  corruption  was  thus  proceeding. 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      177 

The  English  parliament  desired  to  make  the 
Irish  houses  for  ever  unfit  for  self-govern- 
ment. The  Irish  parliament  was  seeking  to 
perform  the  same  office  for  the  Irish  people 
under  it.  The  old  race  meanwhile,  three- 
fourths  of  the  dwellers  in  Ireland,  were 
brought  under  consideration  of  the  rulers 
only  as  objects  of  some  new  rigour  or  severity. 
Their  cry  was  unheard  by  an  absent  and 
indifferent  "conqueror,"  and  the  only  reform 
the  country  ever  knew  was  an  increase  in  the 
army  that  maintained  the  alien  rulers  and 
protected  their  crimes.  In  neither  parlia- 
ment had  the  Irish  any  voice.  In  courts 
where  the  law  was  administered  by  Protestant 
landlords  and  their  agents,  as  magistrates, 
grand  juries,  bailiffs,  lawyers,  and  the  rest — 
"full  of  might  and  injustice,  without  a  word 
for  the  Irish  in  the  law,"  as  an  Irish  poem 
said,  who  would  not  even  write  the  Irish 
names,  but  scornfully  cried  after  all  of  them 
Teig  and  Diarmuid — the  ancient  tongue  of 
the  people  and  their  despised  birth  left  them 
helpless.  Once  a  chief  justice  in  Tipperary 
conducted  trials  with  fairness  and  humanity: 
"for  about  ten  miles  from  Clonmel  both  sides 


178  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  the  road  were  lined  with  men,  women,  and 
children,  who,  as  he  passed  along,  kneeled 
down  and  supplicated  Heaven  to  bless  him 
as  their  protector  and  guardian  angel." 
The  people  poured  from  "this  sod  of  misery" 
across  the  sea.  In  the  service  of  France 
alone  450,000  Irish  soldiers  were  reckoned 
to  have  died  between  1691  and  1745.  Un- 
counted thousands  from  north  and  south 
sailed  to  America.  Irish  Catholics  went 
there  in  a  constant  stream  from  1650  till 
1798.  The  Protestant  settlers  followed  them 
in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Like  the  kings  of  England,  the  parliament 
of  the  English  aristocracy  and  commercial 
magnates  had  failed  to  exploit  Ireland  to 
their  advantage.  For  a  hundred  years  (1691- 
1782)  they  ruled  the  Irish  people  with  the 
strictest  severity  that  human  ingenuity  could 
devise.  A  "strong  government,"  purely 
English,  was  given  its  opportunity — pro- 
longed, undisturbed,  uncontrolled — to  ad- 
vance "the  king's  service,"  the  dependency 
of  Ireland  upon  England,  and  "the  comfort 
or  security  of  any  English  in  it."  A  multi- 
tude of  statesmen  put  their  hands  to  the 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      179 

work.  Commercial  men  in  England  inspired 
the  policy.  English  clergy  were  sent  over  to 
fill  all  the  higher  posts  of  the  church,  and 
were  the  chief  leaders  of  the  secular  govern- 
ment. Such  a  power  very  rarely  falls  to  the 
rulers  in  any  country.  And  in  the  end  there 
was  no  advantage  to  any  party.  Some  astute 
individuals  heaped  up  an  ignoble  wealth, 
but  there  was  no  profit  to  Ireland,  to  Eng- 
land, or  to  the  Empire.  The  Irish  people 
suffered  a  long  agony  unmatched,  perhaps, 
in  European  history.  Few  of  the  Protestant 
country  gentry  had  established  their  for- 
tunes; their  subservience  which  debarred 
them  from  public  duty,  their  privilege  of 
calling  in  English  soldiers  to  protect  them 
from  the  results  of  every  error  or  crime,  had 
robbed  them  of  any  high  intelligence  in 
politics  or  science  in  their  business  of  land 
management,  and  thus  doubly  impoverished 
them.  England  on  her  part  had  thrown  into 
the  sea  from  her  dominion  a  greater  wealth 
of  talent,  industry,  and  bravery  than  had 
ever  been  exiled  from  any  country  in  the 
world:  there  was  not  a  country  in  Europe, 
and  not  an  occupation,  where  Irishmen  were 


180  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

not  in  the  first  rank — as  field-marshals, 
admirals,  ambassadors,  prime  ministers, 
scholars,  physicians,  merchants,  founders  of 
mining  industries,  soldiers,  and  labourers. 
In  exchange  for  this  an  incompetent  and 
inferior  landed  gentry  was  established  in 
Ireland.  Instead  of  profit  for  the  govern- 
ment there  was  plain  bankruptcy — "Eng- 
land," it  was  said,  "must  now  either  support 
this  kingdom,  or  allow  her  the  means  of 
supporting  herself."  As  for  the  Empire, 
the  colonies  had  been  flooded  with  the  men 
that  England  had  wronged.  Even  the  Prot- 
estant exiles  from  Ulster  went  to  America 
as  "Sons  of  St.  Patrick."  "To  shun  per- 
secution and  designed  ruin"  by  the  English 
government,  Protestants  and  Catholics  had 
gone,  and  their  money,  their  arms,  the  fury 
of  their  wrath,  were  spent  in  organising 
the  American  War.  Irishmen  were  at  every 
meeting,  every  council,  every  battle.  Their 
indignation  was  a  white  flame  of  revolt 
that  consumed  every  fear  and  vacillation 
around  it.  That  long,  deep,  and  bitter 
experience  bore  down  the  temporisers,  and 
sent  out  men  trained  in  suffering  to  triumph 


RULE  OF  THE  PARLIAMENT      181 

over  every  adversity.  Brigadier-General 
Owen  Sullivan,  born  at  Limerick  during  the 
siege,  was  publicly  thanked  by  Washington 
and  by  the  congress.  Commodore  John 
Barry,  a  Wexford  man,  "Father  of  the 
American  Navy,"  was  Washington's  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  naval  forces  of  the 
States.  Charles  Thompson  of  Strabane  was 
secretary  of  the  Continental  Congress.  Eight 
Irishmen,  passionate  organisers  of  the  revolt, 
signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
After  the  war  an  Irishman  prepared  the 
Declaration  for  publication  from  Jefferson's 
rough  draft;  an  Irishman's  son  first  publicly 
read  it;  an  Irishman  first  printed  and  pub- 
lished it. 

We  have  seen  the  uncontrolled  rule  of 
English  kings  and  English  Parliaments. 
Such  was  the  end  of  their  story.  There 
was  another  experiment  yet  to  be  tried. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  EISE   OF  A  NEW   IRELAND 
1691-1750 

It  might  have  seemed  impossible  amid 
such  complicated  tyrannies  to  build  up  a 
united  country.  But  the  most  ferocious 
laws  could  not  wholly  destroy  the  kindly 
influences  of  Ireland,  the  essential  needs  of 
men,  nor  the  charities  of  human  nature. 
There  grew  up  too  the  union  of  common 
suffering.  Once  more  the  people  of  Ireland 
were  being  "brayed  together  in  a  mortar" 
to  compact  them  into  a  single  commonwealth. 

The  Irish  had  never  lost  their  power  of 
absorbing  new  settlers  in  their  country. 
The  Cromwellians  complained  that  thousands 
of  the  English  who  came  over  under  Eliza- 
beth had  "become  one  with  the  Irish  as 
well  in  affinity  as  in  idolatry."    Forty  years 

later  these   Cromwellians  planted   on   Irish 
182 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND       183 

farms  suffered  themselves  the  same  change; 
their  children  could  not  speak  a  word  of 
English  and  became  wholly  Irish  in  religion 
and  feeling.  Seven  years  after  the  battle  of 
the  Boyne  the  same  influence  began  to  turn 
Irish  the  very  soldiers  of  William.  The 
civilisation,  the  piety,  the  charm  of  Irish  life 
told  as  of  old.  In  the  country  places,  far 
from  the  government,  kindly  friendships 
grew  up  between  neighbours,  and  Protest- 
ants by  some  device  of  goodwill  would  hide  a 
Catholic  from  some  atrocious  penalty,  would 
save  his  arms  from  being  confiscated,  or  his 
children  from  being  brought  up  as  Protest- 
ants. The  gentry  in  general  spoke  Irish  with 
the  people,  and  common  interests  grew  up 
in  the  land  where  they  lived  together. 

The  Irish  had  seen  the  fires  of  destruction 
pass  over  them,  consuming  the  humanities 
of  their  law,  the  honour  of  their  country, 
and  the  relics  of  their  fathers:  the  cry  of 
their  lamentation,  said  an  Italian  in  1641, 
was  more  expressive  than  any  music  he  had 
heard  of  the  great  masters  of  the  continent. 
The  penal  days  have  left  their  traces.  We 
may  still  see  in  hidden  places  of  the  woods 


184  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

some  cave  or  rock  where  the  people  gathered 
in  secret  to  celebrate  mass.  There  remain 
memorials  of  Irishmen,  cast  out  of  their 
lands,  who  to  mark  their  final  degradation 
had  been  driven  to  the  livelihood  which  the 
new  English  held  in  the  utmost  contempt — 
the  work  of  their  hands;  their  dead  bodies 
were  carried  to  the  ruined  abbeys,  and 
proudly  laid  in  the  roofless  naves  and  chan- 
cels, under  great  sculptured  slabs  bearing 
the  names  of  once  noble  families,  and  deeply 
carved  with  the  instruments  of  the  dead  man's 
trade,  a  plough,  the  tools  of  a  shoemaker 
or  a  carpenter  or  a  mason.  In  a  far  church  in 
Connemara  by  the  Atlantic,  a  Burke  raised 
in  1722  a  scupltured  tomb  to  the  first  of  his 
race  who  had  come  to  Connacht,  the  figure 
in  coat  of  mail  and  conical  helmet  finely 
carved  in  limestone.  Monuments  lie  heaped 
in  Burris,  looking  out  on  the  great  ocean; 
and  in  all  the  sacred  places  of  the  Irish.  By 
their  industry  and  skill  in  the  despised  busi- 
ness of  handicrafts  and  commerce  the  out- 
laws were  fast  winning  most  of  the  ready 
money  of  the  country  into  their  hands. 
It   would   be  a  noble    achievement,   said 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        185 

Swift,  to  abolish  the  Irish  language,  which 
prevented  "the  Irish  from  being  tamed." 
But  Swift's  popularity  with  the  native  Irish 
was  remarkable,  and  when  he  visited  Cavan 
he  was  interested  by  verses  of  its  poets  and 
wrote  an  English  ballad  founded  on  the 
Plearaca  Ui  Ruairc;  he  helped  the  rector 
of  Anna  (Belturbet)  in  his  endeavours  to 
have  prayers  read  in  Irish  in  the  established 
churches  in  remote  places.  The  Protestant 
bishops  and  clergy  in  general,  holding  that 
their  first  duty  was  not  to  minister  to  the 
souls  of  Irishmen,  but  rather  as  agents  of 
the  government  to  bring  Irish  speech  "into 
entire  disuse,"  refused  to  learn  the  only 
language  understood  by  the  people.  Clergy 
and  officials  alike  knew  nothing  whatever 
of  the  true  life  of  Ireland.  Now  and  then 
there  was  a  rare  exception,  and  the  respect 
which  Philip  Skelton  showed  for  the  religious 
convictions  of  a  country-bred  maidservant 
should  be  remembered.  But  in  general  the 
clergy  and  all  other  political  agents  opposed 
kindly  intercourse  of  the  two  races.  The 
fiction  of  complete  Irish  barbarism  was 
necessary  to  maintain  the  Protestant  ascend- 


186  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

ency,  and  in  later  days  to  defend  it.     The 
whole  literature  of  the  Irish  was  therefore 
cast  aside  as  waste  refuse.     Their  race  is 
never  mentioned  in  histories  of  the  eighteenth 
century  save  as  an  indistinct  and  obscure 
mass  of  wretchedness,  lawlessness,  and  igno- 
rance, lying  in  impenetrable  darkness,  whence 
no  voice  ever  arose  even  of  protest  or  com- 
plaint, unless  the  pains  of  starvation  now  and 
again  woke  the  most  miserable  from  their 
torpor  to  some  wild  outrage,  to  be  repressed 
by  even  more  savage  severity.    So  fixed  and 
convenient  did  this  lying  doctrine  prove  that 
it  became  a  truism  never  challenged.     To 
this  day  all  manuscripts  of  the  later  Irish 
times  have  been  rejected  from  purchase  by 
public  funds,  to  the  irrevocable  loss  of  a  vast 
mass  of  Irish  material.    By  steadily  neglect- 
ing everything  written  in  the  native  tongue 
of  the  country,  the  Protestant  planters,  one- 
fourth  of  the  inhabitants,  secured  to  them- 
selves the  sole  place  in  the  later  history  of 
Ireland.     A  false  history  engendered  a  false 
policy,  which  in  the  long  run  held  no  profit 
for  the  Empire,  England,  or  Ireland. 

Unsuspected  by  English  settlers,  the  Irish 


fRISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        187 

tradition  was  carried  across  the  years  of 
captivity  by  these  exiles  in  their  own  land. 
Descendants  of  literary  clans,  historians  and 
poets  and  scribes  were  to  be  found  in  farm- 
houses, working  at  the  plough  and  spade. 
Some  wrote  prose  accounts  of  the  late  wars, 
the  history  of  their  tribe,  the  antiquities  of 
their  province,  annals  of  Ireland,  and  geog- 
raphy. The  greatest  of  the  poets  was  Daibhi 
O'Bruadair  of  Limerick,  a  man  knowing  some 
English  and  learned  in  Irish  lore,  whose  poems 
(1650-1694)  stirred  men  of  the  cabins  with 
lessons  of  their  time,  the  laying  down  of  arms 
by  the  Irish  in  1652,  Sarsfield  and  Limerick, 
the  breaking  of  the  treaty,  the  grandsons  of 
kings  working  with  the  spade,  the  poor  man 
perfected  in  learning,  steadfast,  well  proved 
in  good  sense,  the  chaffering  insolence  of  the 
new  traders,  the  fashion  of  men  fettering 
their  tongues  to  speak  the  mere  ghost  of 
rough  English,  or  turning  Protestant  for 
ease.  Learned  men  showed  the  love  of  their 
language  in  the  making  of  dictionaries  and 
grammars  to  preserve,  now  that  the  great 
schools  were  broken  up,  the  learning  of  the 
great  masters  of  Irish.   Thus  the  poet  Tadhg 


188  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

O'Neachtain  worked  from  1734  to  1749  at 
a  dictionary.  Another  learned  poet  and 
lexicographer,  Aodh  Buidh  MacCurtin,  pub- 
lished with  Conor  O'Begly  in  Paris  a  grammar 
(1728)  and  a  dictionary  (1732);  in  his  last 
edition  of  the  grammar  he  prayed  pardon 
for  "confounding  an  example  of  the  impera- 
tive with  the  potential  mood,"  which  he  was 
caused  to  do  "by  the  great  bother  of  the 
brawling  company  that  is  round  about  me 
in  this  prison."  There  were  still  well-qualified 
scribes  who  copied  the  old  heroic  stories  and 
circulated  them  freely  all  over  Ireland.  There 
were  some  who  translated  religious  books 
from  French  and  Latin  into  Irish.  "I  wish 
to  save,"  said  Charles  O 'Conor,  "as  many  as 
I  can  of  the  ancient  manuscripts  of  Ireland 
from  the  wreck  which  has  overwhelmed  every- 
thing that  once  belonged  to  us."  O'Conor 
was  of  Sligo  county.  His  father,  like  other 
gentlemen,  had  been  so  reduced  by  con- 
fiscation that  he  had  to  plough  with  his  own 
hands.  A  Franciscan  sheltered  in  a  peasant's 
cottage,  who  knew  no  English,  taught  him 
Latin.  He  attended  mass  held  secretly  in 
a  cave.    Amid  such  difficulties  he  gained  the 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        189 

best  learning  of  his  unhappy  time.  Much 
of  the  materials  that  O'Clery  had  used  for 
his  Annals  had  perished  in  the  great  troubles, 
and  O'Conor  began  again  that  endless  labour 
of  Irish  scholars,  the  saving  of  the  relics  of 
his  people's  story  from  final  oblivion.  It  was 
the  passion  of  his  life.  He  formed  an  Irish 
library,  and  copied  with  his  own  hand  large 
volumes  of  extracts  from  books  he  could  not 
possess.  Having  obtained  O'Clery's  own 
manuscript  of  the  Annals,  he  had  this  im- 
mense work  copied  by  his  own  scribe;  and 
another  copy  made  in  1734  by  Hugh  O'Mul- 
loy,  an  excellent  writer,  for  his  friend  Dr. 
OTergus  of  Dublin.  He  wrote  for  the  learned, 
and  delighted  the  peasants  round  him  with 
the  stories  of  their  national  history.  It  is 
interesting  to  recall  that  Goldsmith  probably 
knew  O  'Conor,  so  that  the  best  English  of  an 
Irishman,  and  the  best  learning  of  an  Irish- 
man at  that  time,  were  thus  connected. 

It  was  the  Irish  antiquarians  and  his- 
torians who  in  1759  drew  Irishmen  together 
into  "the  Catholic  Committee" — Charles 
O'Conor,  Dr.  Curry,  and  Wyse  of  Water- 
ford.     O'Conor   by   his   learning   preserved 


190  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

for  them  the  history  of  their  fathers.  Dr. 
Curry,  of  a  Cavan  family  whose  estates  had 
been  swept  from  them  in  1641  and  1691,  had 
studied  as  a  physician  in  France,  and  was 
eminent  in  Dublin  though  shut  out  from 
every  post;  he  was  the  first  to  use  his  re- 
search and  literary  powers  to  bring  truth 
out  of  falsehood  in  the  later  Irish  history, 
and  to  justify  the  Irish  against  the  lying 
accusations  concerning  the  rising  of  1641. 
These  learned  patriots  combined  in  a  move- 
ment to  win  for  the  Irish  some  recognition 
before  the  law  and  some  rights  of  citizens 
in  their  own  land. 

Countless  poets,  meanwhile,  poured  out  in 
verse  the  infinite  sorrow  of  the  Gaels,  recalling 
the  days  when  their  land  was  filled  with  poet- 
schools  and  festivals,  and  the  high  hospitality 
of  great  Irishmen.  If  a  song  of  hope  arose 
that  the  race  should  come  to  their  own  again, 
the  voice  of  Irish  charity  was  not  wanting — 
"Having  the  fear  of  God,  be  ye  full  of  alms- 
giving and  friendliness,  and  forgetting  no- 
thing do  ye  according  to  the  commandments, 
shun  ye  drunkenness  and  oaths  and  cursing, 
and  do  not  say  till  death  'God  damn'  from 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        191 

your  mouths."  Riotous  laughter  broke  out  in 
some;  they  were  all,  in  fact,  professional  wits 
— chief  among  them  Eoghan  Ruadh  O'Sulli- 
van  from  Kerry,  who  died  in  1784;  a  working 
man  who  had  laboured  with  plough  and 
spade,  and  first  came  into  note  for  helping 
his  employer's  son,  fresh  from  a  French 
college,  with  an  explanation  of  a  Greek 
passage.  Jacobite  poems  told  of  the  Lady 
Erin  as  a  beautiful  woman  flying  from  the 
insults  of  foreign  suitors  in  search  of  her 
real  mate — poems  of  fancy,  for  the  Stuarts 
had  lost  all  hold  on  Ireland.  The  spirit  of 
the  north  rang  out  in  a  multitude  of  bards, 
whose  works  perished  in  a  century  of  per- 
secution and  destruction.  Among  exiles  in 
Connacht  manuscripts  perished,  but  old  tradi- 
tion lived  on  the  lips  of  the  peasants,  who 
recited  in  their  cabins  the  love-songs  and  re- 
ligious poems  of  long  centuries  past.  The 
people  in  the  bareness  of  their  poverty  were 
nourished  with  a  literature  full  of  wit,  imagi- 
nation, feeling,  and  dignity.  In  the  poorest 
hovels  there  were  men  skilled  in  a  fine  recita- 
tion. Their  common  language  showed  the 
literary  influence,  and  Irish  peasants  even  in 


192  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

our  own  day  have  used  a  vocabulary  of  some 
five  thousand  words,  as  against  about  eight 
hundred  words  used  by  peasants  in  England. 
Even  the  village  dancing  at  the  cross-roads 
preserved  a  fine  and  skilled  tradition. 

Families,  too,  still  tried  to  have  "a  scholar" 
in  their  house,  for  the  old  learning's  sake. 
Children  shut  out  from  all  means  of  edu- 
cation might  be  seen  learning  their  letters 
by  copying  with  chalk  the  inscriptions  on 
their  fathers'  tombstones.  There  were  few 
candles,  and  the  scholar  read  his  books  by  a 
cabin  fire  in  the  light  given  by  throwing  upon 
it  twigs  and  dried  furze.  Manuscripts  were 
carefully  treasured,  and  in  days  when  it  was 
death  or  ruin  to  be  found  with  an  Irish  book 
they  were  buried  in  the  ground  or  hidden 
in  the  walls.  In  remote  places  schools  were 
maintained  out  of  the  destitution  of  the 
poor;  like  that  one  which  was  kept  up  for  over 
a  hundred  years  in  county  Waterford,  where 
the  people  of  the  surrounding  districts  sup- 
ported "poor  scholars"  free  of  charge. 
There  were  some  in  Kerry,  some  in  Clare, 
where  a  very  remarkable  group  of  poets 
sprang  up.   From  all  parts  of  Ireland  students 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        193 

begged  their  way  to  "the  schools  of  Munster." 
Thus  Greek  and  Latin  still  found  their  way 
into  the  labourer's  cottage.  In  county  Cork, 
John  Clairech  O'Donnell,  in  remembrance  of 
the  ancient  assemblies  of  the  bards  of  all 
Ireland,  gathered  to  his  house  poets  and 
learned  men  to  recite  and  contend  as  in  the 
old  days.  Famous  as  a  poet,  he  wrote  part 
of  a  history  of  Ireland,  and  projected  a  trans- 
lation of  Homer  into  Irish.  But  he  worked 
in  peril,  flying  for  his  life  more  than  once 
before  the  bard-hunters;  in  his  denunciations 
the  English  oppressor  stands  before  us — 
plentiful  his  costly  living  in  the  high-gabled 
lighted-up  mansion  of  the  Irish  Brian,  but 
tight-closed  his  door,  and  his  churlishness 
shut  up  inside  with  him,  there  in  an  opening 
between  two  mountains,  until  famine  clove 
to  the  people  and  bowed  them  to  his  will; 
his  gate  he  never  opened  to  the  moan  of  the 
starving,  "and  oh!  may  heaven  of  the  saints 
be  a  red  wilderness  for  James  Dawson!" 

The  enthusiasm  of  the  Irish  touched  some 
of  the  planters.  A  hereditary  chronicler  of 
the  O'Briens  who  published  in  1717  a  vindi- 
cation of  the  Antiquities  of  Ireland  got  two 


194  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

hundred  and  thirty-eight  subscribers,  divided 
about  equally  between  English  and  Gaelic 
names.  Wandering  poets  sang,  as  Irish  poets 
had  done  nine  hundred  years  before,  even  in 
the  houses  of  the  strangers,  and  found  in 
some  of  them  a  kindly  friend.  O'Carolan, 
the  harper  and  singer,  was  beloved  by  both 
races.  A  slight  inequality  in  a  village  field 
in  Meath  still  after  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  recalls  to  Irish  peasants  the  site  of  the 
house  where  he  was  born,  and  at  his  death 
English  and  Irish,  Protestant  and  Catholic, 
gathered  in  an  encampment  of  tents  to  do 
honour  to  his  name.  The  magic  of  Irish 
music  seems  even  to  have  stirred  in  the 
landlords'  parliament  some  dim  sense  of  a 
national  boast.  An  English  nobleman  com- 
ing to  the  parliament  with  a  Welsh  harper 
claimed  that  in  all  Ireland  no  such  music 
could  be  heard.  Mr.  Jones  of  Leitrim  took 
up  the  challenge  for  an  Irishman  of  his  county 
who  "had  never  worn  linen  or  woollen." 
The  Commons  begged  to  have  the  trial  in 
their  House  before  business  began,  and  all 
assembled  to  greet  the  Leitrim  champion. 
O'Duibhgeanain  was  of  an  old  literary  clan: 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        195 

one  of  them  had  shared  in  making  the  Annals 
of  the  Four  Masters;  he  himself  was  not  only 
a  fine  harper,  but  an  excellent  Greek  and 
Latin  scholar.  He  came,  tall  and  handsome, 
looking  very  noble  in  his  ancient  garb  made 
of  beaten  rushes,  with  a  cloak  or  plaid  of  the 
same  stuff,  and  a  high  conical  cap  of  the  same 
adorned  with  many  tassels.  And  the  House 
of  Commons  gave  him  their  verdict. 

James  Murphy,  a  poor  bricklayer  of  Cork, 
who  became  an  architect  and  studied  Arabian 
antiquities  in  Portugal  and  Spain,  gives  the 
lament  of  Irish  scholars.  "You  accuse  their 
pastors  with  illiterature,  whilst  you  adopt  the 
most  cruel  means  of  making  them  ignorant; 
and  their  peasantry  with  untractableness, 
whilst  you  deprive  them  of  the  means  of 
civilisation.  But  that  is  not  all;  you  have 
deprived  them  at  once  of  their  religion,  their 
liberty,  their  oak,  and  their  harp,  and  left 
them  to  deplore  their  fate,  not  in  the  strains 
of  their  ancestors,  but  in  the  sighs  of  oppres- 
sion." To  the  great  landlords  the  Act  of 
1691  which  had  given  them  wealth  was  the 
dawn  of  Irish  civilisation.  Oblivion  might 
cover  all  the  rest,  all  that  was  not  theirs. 


196  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

They  lived  in  a  land  some  few  years  old, 
not  more  than  a  man's  age  might  cover. 

By  degrees,  however,  dwellers  in  Ireland 
were  forced  into  some  concern  for  its  fortunes. 
Swift  showed  to  the  Protestants  the  wrongs 
they  endured  and  the  liberties  which  should 
be  theirs,  and  flung  his  scorn  on  the  shameful 
system  of  their  slavery  and  their  tyranny 
(1724).  Lord  Molesworth  urged  (1723)  free- 
dom of  religion,  schools  of  husbandry,  relief 
of  the  poor  from  their  intolerable  burdens, 
the  making  parliament  into  a  really  represen- 
tative body.  Bishop  Berkeley  wrote  his 
famous  Querist — the  most  searching  study  of 
the  people's  grief  and  its  remedies. 

Gradually  the  people  of  Ireland  were  being 
drawn  together.  All  classes  suffered  under 
the  laws  to  abolish  Irish  trade  and  industry. 
Human  charities  were  strong  in  men  of  both 
sides,  and  in  the  country  there  was  a  grow- 
ing movement  to  unite  the  more  liberal  of 
the  landowners,  the  Dissenters  of  the  north, 
and  the  Catholics,  in  a  common  citizenship. 
It  had  proved  inpossible  to  carry  out  fully 
the  penal  code.  No  life  could  have  gone  on 
under  its  monstrous  terms.     There  were  not 


RISE  OF  A  NEW  IRELAND        197 

Protestants  enough  to  carry  on  all  the  busi- 
ness of  the  country  and  some  "Papists"  had 
to  be  taken  at  least  into  the  humbler  forms 
of  official  work.  Friendly  acts  between 
neighbours  diminished  persecution. 

"Let  the  legislature  befriend  us  now,  and 
we  are  theirs  forever,"  was  the  cry  of  the 
Munster  peasantry,  organised  under  O'Dris- 
coll,  to  the  Protestant  parliament  in  1786. 

Such  a  movement  alarmed  the  government 
extremely.  If,  they  said,  religious  distinc- 
tions were  abolished,  the  Protestants  would 
find  themselves  secure  of  their  position 
without  British  protection,  and  might  they 
not  then  form  a  government  more  to  the 
taste  and  wishes  of  the  people — in  fact,  might 
not  a  nation  begin  again  to  live  in  Ireland. 
;  The  whole  energy  of  the  government  was 
therefore  called  out  to  avert  the  rise  of  a 
united  Irish  People. 


CHAPTER  XII 

AN   IRISH   PARLIAMENT 
1750-1800 

The  movement  of  conciliation  of  its  peoples 
that  was  shaping  a  new  Ireland,  silent  and 
unrecorded  as  it  was,  can  only  be  understood 
by  the  astonishing  history  of  the  next  fifty 
years,  when  the  spirit  of  a  nation  rose  again 
triumphant,  and  lesser  passions  fell  before 
the  love  of  country. 

The  Protestant  gentry,  who  alone  had  free 
entry  into  public  life,  were  of  necessity  the 
chief  actors  in  the  recorded  story.  But  in 
the  awakening  country  they  had  to  reckon 
with  a  risingp  ower  in  the  Catholic  Irish. 
Dr.  Lucas,  who  in  1741  had  begun  to  stir  for 
reform  and  freedom,  had  stirred  not  only 
the  English  settlers  but  the  native  Irish. 
Idolised  by  the  Irish  people,  he  raised  in  his 
Citizens9  Journal  a  new  national  protest. 
The  pamphlet  war  which  followed — where 
198 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT         199 

men  argued  not  only  on  free  trade  and  govern- 
ment, but  on  Ireland  itself,  on  its  old  and  new 
races,  on  its  Irish  barbarism,  said  some,  its 
Irish  civilisation,  said  others — spread  the 
idea  of  a  common  history  of  Ireland  in  which 
all  its  inhabitants  were  concerned.  In 
parliament  too,  though  Catholics  were  shut 
out,  yet  men  of  old  Irish  race  were  to  be 
found — men  of  Catholic  families  who  had 
accepted  Protestantism  as  a  means  of  enter- 
ing "public  life,  chiefly  by  way  of  the  law.  They 
had  not,  save  very  rarely,  put  off  their 
patriotic  ardour  with  their  old  religion;  of 
the  middle  class,  they  were  braver  in  their 
outlook  than  the  small  and  disheartened 
Catholic  aristocracy.  If  their  numbers  were 
few  their  ability  was  great,  and  behind  them 
lay  that  vast  mass  of  their  own  people  whose 
blood  they  shared. 

It  was  an  Irishman  who  first  roused  the 
House  of  Commons  to  remember  that  they  had 
a  country  of  their  own  and  an  "Irish  interest" 
— Antony  Malone.  This  astonishing  orator 
and  parliamentarian  invented  a  patriotic  op- 
position (1753).  A  great  sea  in  a  "storm" 
men  said  of  him.     Terror  was  immediately 


200  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

excited  at  his  Irish  origin  and  his  national 
feeling.  Dublin  Castle  feared  that  he  might 
mean  emancipation  from  the  English  legis- 
lature, and  in  truth  the  constitutional  de- 
pendency upon  England  was  the  object  upon 
which  Malone's  eye  was  constantly  fixed. 
He  raised  again  the  protest  of  Molyneux  for 
a  free  parliament  and  constitution.  He 
stirred  "the  whole  nation"  for  "the  last 
struggle  for  Ireland."  They  and  their  chil- 
dren would  be  slaves,  he  said,  if  they  yielded 
to  the  claim  of  the  government  that  the 
English  privy  council  could  alter  the  money 
bills  sent  over  by  the  Irish  parliament,  or 
that  the  king  had  the  right  to  apply  at  his 
will  the  surplus  funds  in  the  treasury. 

Malone  was  defeated,  but  the  battle  had 
begun  which  in  thirty  years  was  to  give  to 
Ireland  her  first  hopes  of  freedom.  A  fresh 
current  of  thought  poured  through  the  House 
— free  trade,  free  religion,  a  Habeas  Corpus 
Act,  fewer  pensions  for  Englishmen,  a  share 
in  law  and  government  for  Irishmen,  security 
for  judges,  and  a  parliament  elected  every 
seven  years.  Successors  of  Malone  appeared 
in  the  House  of  Commons  in   1761 — more 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  201 

lawyers,  men  said,  than  any  one  living 
could  remember,  or  "than  appears  in  any 
history  in  this  or  any  other  kingdom  upon 
earth."  They  depended,  not  on  confiscation, 
but  on  their  own  abilities;  they  owed  nothing 
to  government,  which  gave  all  the  great  posts 
of  the  bar  to  Englishmen.  Some  freedom  of 
soul  was  theirs,  and  manhood  for  the  long 
struggle.  In  1765  the  issue  was  clearly  set. 
The  English  House  of  Commons  which  had 
passed  the  Stamp  Act  for  the  American 
colonies,  argued  that  it  had  the  right  to  tax 
Ireland  without  her  consent;  and  English 
lawyers  laid  down  the  absolute  power  of 
parliament  to  bind  Ireland  by  its  laws.  In 
Ireland  Lord  Charlemont  and  some  other 
peers  declared  that  Ireland  was  a  distinct 
kingdom,  with  its  own  legislature  and  execu- 
tive under  the  king. 

In  that  same  year  the  patriots  demanded 
that  elections  should  be  held  every  seven 
years — the  first  step  in  Ireland  towards  a 
true  representation,  and  the  first  blow  to  the 
dominion  of  an  aristocracy.  The  English 
government  dealt  its  counter-stroke.  The 
viceroy  was  ordered  to  reside  in  Dublin,  and 


202  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

by  making  himself  the  source  of  all  favours, 
the  giver  of  all  gratifications,  to  concentrate 
political  influence  in  the  English  Crown.  A 
system  of  bribery  began  beyond  all  previous 
dreams;  peerages  were  made  by  the  score; 
and  the  first  national  debt  of  nearly  two 
millions  created  in  less  than  thirty  years. 
The  landowners  who  controlled  the  seats  in 
the  Commons  were  reminded  that  "they  held 
by  Great  Britain  everything  most  dear  to 
them,  their  religion,  their  pre-eminence,  their 
property,  their  political  power";  that  "con- 
fiscation is  their  common  title."  "The  king's 
business,"  as  the  government  understood  it, 
lay  in  "procuring  the  supplies  which  the 
English  minister  thought  fit  to  ask,  and 
preventing  the  parliament  from  examining 
into  the  account  of  previous  years." 

Meanwhile  misery  deepened.  In  1778 
thirty  thousand  Irishmen  were  seeking  their 
living  on  the  continent,  besides  the  vast 
numbers  flying  to  America.  "The  wretches 
that  remained  had  scarcely  the  appearance 
of  human  creatures."  English  exports  to 
Ireland  sank  by  half-a-million,  and  England 
instead    of    receiving    money    had    to    send 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT        203 

£50,000  for  the  payment  of  troops  there. 
Other  dangers  had  arisen.  George  Washing- 
ton was  made  commander-in-chief  of  the 
forces  for  the  American  war  in  1775,  and  in 
1778  France  recognised  American  independ- 
ence. The  shores  of  Ireland  lay  open  to  at- 
tack: the  country  was  drained  of  troops. 
Bands  of  volunteers  were  formed  for  its  pro- 
tection, Protestant  troops  led  by  landlords 
and  gentry.  In  a  year  40,000  volunteers  were 
enrolled  (1779).  Ireland  was  no  longer  un- 
armed. What  was  even  more  important,  she 
was  no  longer  unrepresented.  A  packed 
parliament  that  had  obscured  the  true  desires 
of  the  country  was  silenced  before  the  voice 
of  the  people.  In  the  sense  of  a  common 
duty,  landlord  and  tenant,  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  were  joined;  the  spirit  of  tolerance 
and  nationality  that  had  been  spreading 
through  the  country  was  openly  manifested. 
In  those  times  of  hope  and  terror  men's 
minds  on  both  sides  moved  quickly.  The 
collapse  of  the  English  system  was  rapid;  the 
government  saw  the  failure  of  their  army 
plans  with  the  refusal  of  the  Irish  to  give  any 
more  military  grants;    the  failure  of  their 


204  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

gains  from  the  Irish  treasury  in  the  near  bank- 
ruptcy of  the  Irish  state,  with  the  burden  of 
its  upkeep  thrown  on  England;  the  failure  of 
the  prodigious  corruption  and  buying  of  the 
souls  of  men  before  the  new  spirit  that  swept 
through  the  island,  the  spirit  of  a  nation. 
"England  has  sown  her  laws  in  dragons' 
teeth,  and  they  have  sprung  up  in  armed 
men,"  cried  Hussey  Burgh,  a  worthy  Irish 
successor  of  Malone  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. "It  is  no  longer  the  parliament  of 
Ireland  that  is  to  be  managed  or  attended  to," 
wrote  the  lord-lieutenant.  "  It  is  the  whole  of 
this  country."  Above  all,  the  war  with  the 
colonies  brought  home  to  them  Grattan's 
prophecy — "what  you  trample  on  in  Europe 
will  sting  you  in  America." 

The  country,  through  the  Volunteers,  re- 
quired four  main  reforms.  They  asked  for 
justice  in  the  law-courts,  and  that  the  Habeas 
Corpus  Act  should  be  restored,  and  independ- 
ent judges  no  longer  hold  their  places  at 
pleasure.  They  asked  that  the  English  com- 
mercial laws  which  had  ruined  Irish  industry 
and  sunk  the  land  in  poverty  and  idleness 
should   be   abandoned;     taught   by   a   long 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  205 

misery,  Irishmen  agreed  to  buy  no  manu- 
factures but  the  work  of  Irish  hands,  and 
Dublin  men  compelled  members  to  swear 
that  they  should  vote  for  "the  good  of  Ire- 
land," a  new  phrase  in  politics.  A  third 
demand  was  that  the  penal  laws  which 
divided  and  broke  the  strength  of  Ireland 
should  cease.  "The  Irish  Protestant,"  cried 
Grattan,  "could  never  be  free  till  the  Irish 
Catholic  had  ceased  to  be  a  slave."  "You 
are  now,"  said  Burke,  "beginning  to  have  a 
country."  Finally  a  great  cry  for  the  in- 
dependence of  their  parliament  rose  in  every 
county  and  from  every  class. 

The  demands  for  the  justice  of  free  men, 
for  free  trade,  free  religion,  a  free  nation, 
were  carried  by  the  popular  passion  into  the 
parliaments  of  Dublin  and  London.  In  three 
years  the  Dublin  parliament  had  freed  Pro- 
testant dissenters  from  the  Test  Act  and  had 
repealed  the  greater  part  of  the  penal  code; 
the  English  commercial  code  had  fallen  to 
the  ground;  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act  was  won. 
In  1780  Grattan  proposed  his  resolutions 
declaring  that  while  the  two  nations  were 
inseparably  bound  together  under  one  Crown, 


206  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

the  King,  Lords,  and  Commons  of  Ireland 
could  alone  make  laws  for  Ireland. 

The  claim  for  a  free  parliament  ran  through 
the  country — "the  epidemic  madness,"  ex- 
claimed the  viceroy.  But  the  Irish  had  good 
reason  for  their  madness.  At  the  first  stirring 
of  the  national  movement  in  1778  "artful 
politicians"  in  England  had  revived  a  scheme 
favourably  viewed  there — the  abolition  of 
an  Irish  parliament  and  the  union  of  Ireland 
with  England.  "Do  not  make  an  union  with 
us,  sir,"  said  Dr.  Johnson  to  an  Irishman  in 
1779;  "we  should  unite  with  you  only  to  rob 
you."  The  threat  of  the  disappearance  of 
Ireland  as  a  country  quickened  anxiety  to 
restore  its  old  parliament.  The  Irish  knew 
too  how  precarious  was  all  that  they  had 
gained.  Lord  North  described  all  past  con- 
cessions as  "resumable  at  pleasure"  by  the 
power  that  granted  them. 

In  presence  of  these  dangers  the  Volunteers 
called  a  convention  of  their  body  to  meet  in 
the  church  of  Dungannon  on  Feb.  15, 1782 — to 
their  mind  no  unfit  place  for  their  lofty  work. 

"We  know,"  they  said,  "our  duty  to 
our  sovereign  and  our  loyalty;   we  know  our 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  207 

duty  to  ourselves  and  are  resolved  to  be  free." 
"As  Irishmen,  as  Christians,  and  as  Protest- 
ants," they  rejoiced  in  the  relaxation  of  penal 
laws  and  upheld  the  sacred  rights  of  all  to 
freedom  of  religion.  A  week  later  Grattan 
moved  in  the  House  of  Commons  an  address 
to  the  king — that  the  people  of  this  country 
are  a  free  people;  that  the  crown  of  Ireland 
is  an  imperial  crown;  and  the  kingdom  of 
Ireland  a  distinct  kingdom  with  a  parlia- 
ment of  her  own,  the  sole  legislature  thereof. 
The  battle  opened  by  Molyneux  a  hundred 
years  before  was  won.  The  Act  of  1719,  by 
which  the  English  parliament  had  justified 
its  usurpation  of  powers,  was  repealed  (1782). 
"To  set  aside  all  doubts"  another  Act  (1783) 
declared  that  the  right  of  Ireland  to  be 
governed  solely  by  the  king  and  the  parlia- 
ment of  Ireland  was  now  established  and  as- 
certained, and  should  never  again  be  ques- 
tioned or  questionable. 

On  April  16,  1782,  Grattan  passed  through 
the  long  ranks  of  Volunteers  drawn  up  before 
the  old  Parliament  House  of  Ireland,  to 
proclaim  the  victory  of  his  country.  "I 
am  now  to  address  a  free  people.    Ages  have 


208  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

passed  away,  and  this  is  the  first  moment 
in  which  you  could  be  distinguished  by  that 
appellation.  .  .  .  Ireland  is  now  a  nation. 
In  that  character  I  hail  her,  and  bowing  in 
her  august  presence,  I  say  esto  perpetual" 
The  first  act  of  the  emancipated  parliament 
was  to  vote  a  grant  for  twenty  thousand 
sailors  for  the  English  navy. 

That  day  of  a  nation's  exultation  and 
thanksgiving  was  brief.  The  restored  parlia- 
ment entered  into  a  gloomy  inheritance — an 
authority  which  had  been  polluted  and  de- 
stroyed— an  almost  ruined  country.  The 
heritage  of  a  tyranny  prolonged  through 
centuries  was  not  to  be  got  rid  of  rapidly. 
England  gave  to  Ireland  half  a  generation  for 
the  task. 

Since  the  days  of  Henry  VIII  the  Irish 
parliaments  had  been  shaped  and  compacted 
to  give  to  England  complete  control.  The 
system  in  this  country,  wrote  the  viceroy,  did 
not  bear  the  smallest  resemblance  to  represen- 
tation. All  bills  had  to  go  through  the  privy 
council,  whose  secret  and  overwhelming  influ- 
ence was  backed  by  the  privy  council  in  Eng- 
land, the  English  law  officers,  and  finally  the 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  209 

English  cabinet.  Irish  proposals  were  re- 
jected not  in  parliament,  but  in  these  secret 
councils.  The  king  had  a  veto  in  Ireland, 
not  in  England.  The  English  cabinet, 
changing  with  English  parties,  had  the  last 
word  on  every  Irish  bill.  There  was  no  Irish 
cabinet  responsible  to  the  Irish  Houses:  no 
ministry  resigned,  whatever  the  majority  by 
which  it  was  defeated.  Nominally  elected  by 
about  one-fifth  of  the  inhabitants,  the  Com- 
mons did  not  represent  even  these.  A  land- 
lords' assembly,  there  was  no  Catholic  in  it, 
and  no  merchant.  Even  the  Irish  landlords 
were  subdued  to  English  interests :  some  hun- 
dred Englishmen,  whose  main  property  was 
in  England  but  who  commanded  a  number 
of  votes  for  lands  in  Ireland,  did  constantly 
override  the  Irish  landlords  and  drag  them 
on  in  a  policy  far  from  serviceable  to  them. 
The  landlords'  men  in  the  Commons  were 
accustomed  to  vote  as  the  Castle  might  direct. 
In  the  complete  degradation  of  public  life  no 
humiliation  or  lack  of  public  honour  offended 
them.  The  number  of  placemen  and  pen- 
sioners equalled  nearly  one-half  of  the  whole 
efficient  body:  "the  price  of  a  seat  of  parlia- 


210  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

merit,"  men  said,  "is  as  well  ascertained  as 
that  of  the  cattle  of  the  field." 

All  these  dangers  might  with  time  and  pa- 
tience be  overcome.  An  Irish  body,  on  Irish 
soil,  no  matter  what  its  constitution,  could  not 
remain  aloof  from  the  needs,  and  blind  to  the 
facts,  of  Ireland,  like  strangers  in  another  land. 
The  good- will  of  the  people  abounded;  even 
the  poorer  farmers  showed  in  a  better  dress,  in 
cleanliness,  in  self-respect,  how  they  had  been 
stirred  by  the  dream  of  freedom,  the  hope  of 
a  country.  The  connection  with  England,  the 
dependence  on  the  king,  was  fully  accepted, 
and  Ireland  prepared  to  tax  herself  out  of  all 
proportion  to  her  wealth  for  imperial  purposes. 
The  gentry  were  losing  the  fears  that  had  pos- 
sessed them  for  their  properties,  and  a  fair 
hope  was  opening  for  an  Ireland  tolerant, 
united,  educated,  and  industrious.  Volun- 
teers, disciplined,  sober,  and  law-abiding,  had 
shown  the  orderly  forces  of  the  country. 
Parliament  had  awakened  to  the  care  of 
Ireland  as  well  as  the  benefit  of  England. 
In  a  few  years  it  opened  "the  gates  of  opu- 
lence and  knowledge."  It  abolished  the 
cruelties  of  the  penal  laws,  and  prepared  the 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  211 

union  of  all  religions  in  a  common  citizenship. 
It  showed  admirable  knowledge  in  the  method 
of  restoring  prosperity  to  the  country,  awak- 
ening its  industrial  life,  increasing  tillage, 
and  opening  inland  navigation.  Time  was 
needed  to  close  the  springs  of  corruption  and 
to  bring  reform  to  the  parliament  itself. 

But  the  very  success  of  parliament  woke 
fears  in  England,  and  alarm  in  the  autocratic 
government  of  Ireland.  Jealous  of  power, 
ministers  set  themselves  to  restore  by  cor- 
ruption an  absolute  authority,  and  recover  by 
bribery  the  prerogative  that  had  been  lost. 

The  first  danger  appeared  in  1785,  in  the 
commercial  negotiations  with  England.  To 
crush  the  woollen  trade  England  had  put 
duties  of  over  £2  a  yard  on  a  certain  cloth 
carried  from  Ireland  to  England,  which  paid 
5^d.  if  brought  from  England  to  Ireland;  and 
so  on  for  other  goods.  Irish  shipping  had  been 
reduced  to  less  than  a  third  of  that  of  Liver- 
pool alone.  Pitt's  proposal  of  free  trade 
between  the  countries  was  accepted  by  Ire- 
land (1785),  but  a  storm  of  wrath  swept  over 
the  British  world  of  business;  they  refused 
Pitt's  explanation  that  an  Ireland  where  all 


212  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

industries  had  been  killed  could  not  compete 
against  the  industrial  pre-eminence  of  Eng- 
land; and  prepared  a  new  scheme  which  re- 
established the  ascendency  of  the  British  par- 
liament over  Irish  navigation  and  commerce. 
This  was  rejected  in  Ireland  as  fatal  to  their 
Constitution.  Twice  again  the  Irish  parliament 
attempted  a  commercial  agreement  between 
the  two  countries :  twice  the  Irish  government 
refused  to  give  it  place;  a  few  years  later  the 
same  ministers  urged  the  Union  on  the  ground 
that  no  such  commercial  arrangement  existed. 
The  advantages  which  England  possessed  and 
should  maintain  were  explained  by  the  vice- 
roy to  Pitt  in  1792.  "Is  not  the  very  essence 
of  your  imperial  policy  to  prevent  the  interest 
of  Ireland  clashing  and  interfering  with  the 
interest  of  England?  .  .  .  Have  you  not 
crushed  her  in  every  point  that  would  inter- 
fere with  British  interest  or  monopoly  by 
means  of  her  parliament  for  the  last  century, 
till  lately?  .  .  .  You  know  the  advantages 
you  reap  from  Ireland.  ...  In  return  does 
she  cost  you  one  farthing  (except  the  linen 
monopoly)?  Do  you  employ  a  soldier  on 
her  account  she  does  not  pay,  or  a  single  ship 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  213 

more  for  the  protection  of  the  British  com- 
merce than  if  she  was  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea?" 

The  Catholic  question  also  awakened  the 
Castle  fears.  The  penal  laws  had  failed  to 
diminish  the  "Papists":  at  the  then  rate  of 
conversion  it  would  take  four  thousand  years 
to  turn  the  people  into  Protestants.  A 
nobler  idea  had  arisen  throughout  Ireland. 
"The  question  is  now,"  Grattan  said, 
"whether  we  shall  be  a  Protestant  settlement 
or  an  Irish  nation  ...  for  so  long  as  we 
exclude  Catholics  from  natural  liberty  and 
the  common  rights  of  man  we  are  not  a 
people."  Nothing  could  be  more  unwelcome 
to  the  government.  A  real  union  between 
religious  bodies  in  Ireland,  they  said,  would 
induce  Irish  statesmen  to  regulate  their 
policy  mainly  by  the  public  opinion  of  their 
own  country.  To  avert  this  danger  they 
put  forth  all  their  strength.  "The  present 
frame  of  Irish  government  is  particularly 
well  calculated  for  our  purpose.  That 
frame  is  a  Protestant  garrison  in  possession 
of  the  land,  magistracy,  and  power  of  the 
country;    holding  that  property  under  the 


214  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

tenure  of  British  power  and  supremacy,  and 
ready  at  every  instant  to  crush  the  rising  of 
the  conquered." 

Finally  the  pressing  question  of  reform, 
passionately  demanded  by  Protestant  and 
Catholic  for  fifteen  years,  was  resisted  by 
the  whole  might  of  the  Castle.  "If,"  wrote 
the  lord-lieutenant  to  Pitt,  "as  her  govern- 
ment became  more  open  and  more  attentive 
to  the  feelings  of  the  Irish  nation,  the  diffi- 
culty of  management  had  increased,  is  that 
a  reason  for  opening  the  government  and 
making  the  parliament  more  subservient  to 
the  feelings  of  the  nation  at  large?" 

To  the  misfortune  both  of  Ireland  and  of 
England  the  Irish  government  through  these 
years  was  led  by  one  of  the  darkest  influences 
known  in  the  evil  counsels  of  its  history — the 
chancellor  Fitzgibbon,  rewarded  by  England 
with  the  title  Earl  of  Clare.  Unchecked  by 
criticism,  secret  in  machinations,  brutal  in 
speech,  and  violent  in  authority,  he  had 
known  the  use  of  every  evil  power  that  still 
remained  as  a  legacy  from  the  past.  By 
working  on  the  ignorance  of  the  cabinet  in 
London  and  on  the  alarms  and  corruptions 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  215 

of  Ireland,  by  using  all  the  secret  powers  left 
in  his  hands  through  the  privy  council,  by  a 
system  of  unexampled  bribery,  he  succeeded 
in  paralysing  the  constitution  which  it  was 
his  business  to  maintain,  and  destroying  the 
parliamentary  rights  which  had  been  nom- 
inally conceded.  The  voice  of  the  nation 
was  silenced  by  the  forbidding  of  all  con- 
ventions. In  the  re-established  "frame  of 
government"  Fitzgibbon  was  all-powerful. 
The  only  English  viceroy  who  resisted  him, 
Lord  Fitzwilliam,  was  recalled  amid  the 
acclamations  and  lamentations  of  Ireland — 
all  others  yielded  to  his  force.  Government 
in  his  hands  was  the  enemy  of  the  people, 
parliament  a  mockery,  constitutional  move- 
ments mere  vanity.  Law  appeared  only  as 
an  instrument  of  oppression;  the  Catholic 
Irish  were  put  out  of  its  protection,  the 
government  agents  out  of  its  control.  The 
country  gentry  were  alienated  and  demoral- 
ised— left  to  waste  with  "their  inert  property 
and  their  inert  talents."  Every  reform  was 
refused  which  might  have  allayed  the  fears 
of  the  people.  Religious  war  was  secretly 
stirred  up  by  the  agents  of  the  government 
and  in  its  interest,  setting  one  part  of  the  coun- 


216  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

try  to  exterminate  the  other.  Distrust  and 
suspicion,  arrogance  and  fear,  with  their 
train  of  calamities  for  the  next  hundred 
years  distracted  the  island. 

A  system  of  absolute  power,  maintained 
by  coercion,  woke  the  deep  passion  of  the 
country.  Despair  of  the  constitution  made 
men  turn  to  republicanism  and  agitation  in 
arms.  The  violent  repression  of  freedom  was 
used  at  a  time  when  the  progress  of  the 
human  mind  had  been  prodigious,  when  on 
all  sides  men  were  drinking  in  the  lessons  of 
popular  liberties  from  the  republics  of  Amer- 
ica and  France.  The  system  of  rule  inaugu- 
rated by  Fitzgibbon  could  have  only  one  end 
— the  revolt  of  a  maddened  people.  Warnings 
and  entreaties  poured  in  to  the  Castle.  To 
the  very  last  the  gentry  pleaded  for  reform 
to  reassure  men  drifting  in  their  despair  into 
plots  of  armed  republicanism.  Every  meas- 
ure to  relieve  their  fears  was  denied,  every 
measure  to  heighten  them  was  pursued. 
Violent  statesmen  in  the  Castle,  and  officers 
of  their  troops,  did  not  fear  to  express  their 
sense  that  a  rebellion  would  enable  them  to 
make  an  end  of  the  discontented  once  for  all, 
and  of  the  Irish  Constitution.     The  rising 


AN  IRISH  PARLIAMENT  217 

was,  in  fact,  at  last  forced  by  the  horrors 
which  were  openly  encouraged  by  the  govern- 
ment in  1796-7.  "Every  crime,  every 
cruelty,  that  could  be  committed  by  Cos- 
sacks or  Calmucks  has  been  transacted  here," 
said  General  Abercromby,  sent  in  1797  as 
commander-in-chief.  He  refused  the  bar- 
barities of  martial  rule  when,  as  he  said,  the 
government's  orders  might  be  carried  over 
the  whole  kingdom  by  an  orderly  dragoon, 
or  a  writ  executed  without  any  difficulty,  a 
few  places  in  the  mountains  excepted;  and 
demanded  the  maintenance  of  law.  "The 
abuses  of  all  kinds  I  found  here  can  scarcely 
be  believed  or  enumerated."  "He  must  have 
lost  his  senses,"  wrote  Clare  of  the  great 
soldier,  and  "this  Scotch  beast,"  as  he  called 
him,  was  forced  out  of  the  country  as  Lord 
Fitzwilliam  had  been.  Abercromby  was 
succeeded  by  General  Lake,  who  had  already 
shown  the  ferocity  of  his  temper  in  his  com- 
mand in  Ulster,  and  in  a  month  the  rebellion 
broke  out. 

That  appalling  tale  of  terror,  despair,  and 
cruelty  cannot  be  told  in  all  its  horror.  The 
people,  scared  into  scattered  risings,  refused 


218  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

protection  when  their  arms  were  given  up, 
or  terms  if  they  surrendered,  were  without 
hope;  the  "pacification"  of  the  government 
set  no  limits  to  atrocities,  and  the  cry  of  the 
tortured  rose  unceasingly  day  and  night. 

The  suppression  of  the  rebellion  burned 
into  the  Irish  heart  the  belief  that  the  Eng- 
lish government  was  their  implacable  enemy, 
that  the  law  was  their  oppressor,  and  Eng- 
lishmen the  haters  of  their  race.  The  treat- 
ment of  later  years  has  not  yet  wiped  out  of 
memory  that  horror.  The  dark  fear  that 
during  the  rebellion  stood  over  the  Irish 
peasant  in  Iris  cabin  has  been  used  to  illus- 
trate his  credulity  and  his  brutishness.  The 
government  cannot  be  excused  by  that  same 
plea  of  fear.  Clare  no  doubt  held  the  doc- 
trine of  many  English  governors  before  him, 
that  Ireland  could  only  be  kept  bound  to 
England  by  the  ruin  of  its  parliament  and 
the  corruption  of  its  gentry,  the  perpetual 
animosity  of  its  races,  and  the  enslavement 
of  its  people.  But  even  in  his  own  day  there 
were  men  who  believed  in  a  nobler  states- 
manship— in  a  union  of  the  nations  in  equal 
honour  and  liberties. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

IRELAND   UNDER   THE   UNION 

1800-1900 

The  horror  of  death  lay  over  Ireland; 
cruelty  and  terror  raised  to  a  frenzy;  govern- 
ment by  martial  law;  a  huge  army  occupy- 
ing the  country.  In  that  dark  time  the  plan 
for  the  Union  with  England,  secretly  pre- 
pared in  London,  was  announced  to  the 
Irish  parliament. 

It  seemed  that  England  had  everything  to 
gain  by  a  union.  There  was  one  objection. 
Chatham  had  feared  that  a  hundred  Irishmen 
would  strengthen  the  democratic  side  of  the 
English  parliament;  others  that  their  elo- 
quence would  lengthen  and  perhaps  confuse 
debates.  But  it  was  held  that  a  hundred 
members  would  be  lost  in  the  British  parlia- 
ment, and  that  Irish  doctrines  would  be  sunk 
in  the  sea  of  British  common  sense. 
219 


220  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

In  Ireland  a  union  was  detested  as  a  con- 
spiracy against  its  liberties.  The  parliament 
at  once  rejected  it;  no  parliament,  it  was 
urged,  had  a  right  to  pass  an  act  destroying 
the  constitution  of  Ireland,  and  handing  over 
the  dominion  to  another  country,  without 
asking  consent  of  the  nation.  Pitt  refused 
to  have  anything  to  say  to  this  Jacobin 
doctrine  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people — 
a  doctrine  he  would  oppose  wherever  he 
encountered  it. 

The  Union,  Pitt  said,  was  no  proposal  to 
subject  Ireland  to  a  foreign  yoke,  but  a 
volutnary  association  of  two  great  countries 
seeking  their  common  benefit  in  one  empire. 
There  were  progresses  of  the  viceroy,  visits 
of  political  agents,  military  warnings,  threats 
of  eviction,  to  induce  petitions  in  its  favour; 
all  reforms  were  refused — the  outrageous 
system  of  collecting  tithes,  the  disabilities 
of  Catholics — so  as  to  keep  something  to 
bargain  with;  137,000  armed  men  were 
assembled  in  Ireland.  But  amid  the  univer- 
sal detestation  and  execration  of  a  Union  the 
government  dared  not  risk  an  election,  and 
proceeded  to  pack  the  parliament  privately. 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    221 

By  official  means  the  Commons  were  purged 
of  sixty-three  opponents,  and  safe  men  put 
in,  some  Englishmen,  some  staff-officers,  men 
without  a  foot  of  land  in  Ireland.  There 
were,  contrary  to  one  of  the  new  laws, 
seventy-two  place-holders  and  pensioners  in 
the  House.  Fifty-four  peerages  were  given 
to  buy  consciences.  The  borough-holders 
were  offered  lj  millions  to  console  them  for 
loss  in  sale  of  seats.  There  was  a  host  of 
minor  pensions.  Threats  and  disgrace  were 
used  to  others.  Large  sums  were  sent  from 
London  to  bribe  the  Press,  and  corrupt  the 
wavering  with  ready  money.  Pitt  pledged 
himself  to  emancipation. 

Thus  in  1800,  at  the  point  of  the  sword, 
and  amid  many  adjurations  to  speed  from 
England,  the  Act  of  Union  was  forced  through 
the  most  corrupt  parliament  ever  created  by 
a  government:  it  was  said  that  only  seven 
of  the  majority  were  unbribed.  An  Act 
"formed  in  the  British  cabinet,  unsolicited 
by  the  Irish  nation,"  "passed  in  the  middle 
of  war,  in  the  centre  of  a  tremendous  mili- 
tary force,  under  the  influence  of  immediate 
personal  danger,"  was  followed,  as  wise  men 


IRISH   NATIONALITY 

warned,  by  generations  of  strife.       A 
hundred  years  of    cer  tion.  from 

the  first  tragedy  of  Robert  Emmet's  abor: 

proclaimed  the  undying  oppo- 
n  of  Irishmen  to  a  Union  that  from  the 
first  lacked  all  moral  sanction. 

An  English  parliament,  all  intermediate 
power  being  destroyed,  was  now  confronted 
with  the  Irish  people.  Of  that  people  it 
knew  nothing,  of  its  national  spirit,  its 
conception  of  government  or  social  life.  The 
history  and  literature  which  might  reveal 
the  mind  of  the  nation  is  so  neglected  that 
to  this  day  there  is  no  means  for  its  study 
:he  Imperial  University,  nor  the  capital 
of  Empire.  The  Times  perceived  in  "the 
Celtic  twilight"  a  "slovenly  old  barbarism/' 
Peel  in  his  ignorance  thought  Irishmen  had 
good  qualities  except  for  "a  general  con- 
federacy in  crime  ...  a  settled  and  uni- 
for:  m  of  guilt,,  accompanied  by  horrible 

and  monstrous  perjuries  such  as  could  not 
be  found  in  any  civilised  country."' 

Promises  were  lavished  to  commend  the 
Union.      Mirr-  sirred    Ireland   of 

expenditure  and  lighter  taxation:    with  vast 


IRELAND   UNDER  THE  UNION    223 

commerce  and  manufactures,  a  rise  in  the 
value  of  land,  and  a  stream  of  English  capital 
and  industry.  All  contests  being  referred 
from  the  island  to  Great  Britain — to  a  body 
not  like  the  Irish  influenced  by  prejudices 
and  passions — Ireland  would  for  the  first 
time  arrive  at  national  union.  The  passing 
over  to  London  of  the  chief  part  of  Irish 
intelligence  and  wealth  would  give  to  Ire- 
land "a  power  over  the  executive  and  general 
policy  of  the  Empire  which  would  far  more 
than  compensate  her";  and  would,  in  fact, 
lead  to  such  a  union  of  hearts  that  presently 
it  would  not  matter,  Pitt  hoped,  whether 
members  for  Ireland  were  elected  in  Ireland 
or  in  England.  Ireland  would  also  be 
placed  in  "a  natural  situation,"  for  by 
union  with  the  Empire  she  would  have  four- 
teen to  three  in  favour  of  her  Protestant 
establishment,  instead  of  three  to  one  against 
it  as  happened  in  the  country  itself;  so  that 
Protestant  ascendency  would  be  for  ever 
assured.  The  Catholics,  however,  would  find 
in  the  pure  and  serene  air  of  the  English 
legislature  impartial  kindness,  and  the  poor 
might  hope  for  relief  from  tithes  and  the  need 


224  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

of  supporting  their  clergy.  All  Irish  finan- 
ciers and  patriots  contended  that  the  fair 
words  were  deceptive,  and  that  the  Union 
must  bring  to  Ireland  immeasurable  disaster. 

Any  discussion  of  the  Union  in  its  effect 
on  Ireland  lies  apart  from  a  discussion  of  the 
motives  of  men  who  administered  the  system 
in  the  last  century.  The  system  itself, 
wrongly  conceived  and  wrongly  enforced, 
contained  the  principles  of  ruin,  and  no  good 
motives  could  make  it  work  for  the  benefit 
of  Ireland,  or,  in  the  long  run,  of  England. 

Oppressive  financial  burdens  were  laid  on 
the  Irish.  Each  country  was  for  the  next 
twenty  years  to  provide  for  its  own  expendi- 
ture and  debt,  and  to  contribute  a  sum  to 
the  general  expenses  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
fixed  in  the  proportion  of  seven  and  a  half 
parts  for  Great  Britain  and  one  part  for 
Ireland.  The  debt  of  Ireland  had  formerly 
been  small;  in  1793  it  was  2J4  millions;  it 
had  risen  to  nearly  28  millions  by  1801,  in 
great  measure  through  the  charges  of  Clare's 
policy  of  martial  law  and  bribery.  In  the 
next  years  heavy  loans  were  required  for  the 
Napoleonic  war.     When  Ireland,  exhausted 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    225 

by  calamity,  was  unable  to  pay,  loans  were 
raised  in  England  at  heavy  war-rates  and 
charged  to  the  public  debt  of  Ireland.  In 
1817  the  Irish  debt  had  increased  more  than 
fourfold,  to  nearly  113  millions.  No  record 
was  made  in  the  books  of  the  Exchequer  as  to 
what  portion  of  the  vast  sums  raised  should  in 
fairness  be  allotted  to  Ireland;  there  is  no 
proof  that  there  was  any  accuracy  in  the 
apportionment.  The  promised  lighter  taxa- 
tion ended  in  a  near  bankruptcy,  and  the 
approach  of  an  appalling  famine  in  1817. 
Bankruptcy  was  avoided  by  uniting  the  two 
treasuries  to  form  one  national  debt — but 
the  burden  of  Ireland  remained  as  oppressive 
as  before.  Meanwhile  the  effect  of  the  Union 
had  been  to  depress  all  Irish  industries  and 
resources,  and  in  these  sixteen  years  the 
comparative  wealth  of  Ireland  had  fallen, 
and  the  taxes  had  risen  far  beyond  the  rise  in 
England.  The  people  sank  yet  deeper  under 
their  heavy  load.  The  result  of  their  incapac- 
ity to  pay  the  amount  fixed  at  the  Union  was, 
that  of  all  the  taxes  collected  from  them  for 
the  next  fifty-three  years,  one-third  was  spent 
in   Ireland,  and   two-thirds   were    absorbed 


226  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

by  England;  from  1817  to  1870  the  cost  of 
government  in  Ireland  was  under  100  millions, 
while  the  contributions  to  the  imperial  exche- 
quer were  210  millions,  so  that  Ireland  sent 
to  England  more  than  twice  as  much  as  was 
spent  on  her.  The  tribute  from  Ireland  to 
England  in  the  last  ninety-three  years,  over 
and  above  the  cost  of  Irish  administration, 
has  been  over  325  millions — a  sum  which 
would  probably  be  much  increased  by  a  more 
exact  method  both  of  recording  the  revenue 
collected  from  Ireland  and  the  "local"  and 
"imperial"  charges,  so  as  to  give  the  full  Irish 
revenue,  and  to  prevent  the  debiting  to  Ire- 
land of  charges  for  which  she  was  not  really 
liable.  While  this  heavy  ransom  was  exacted 
Ireland  was  represented  as  a  beggar,  never 
satisfied,  at  the  gates  of  England. 

Later,  in  1852,  Gladstone  began  to  carry 
out  the  second  part  of  the  Union  scheme, 
the  indiscriminate  taxation  of  the  two  coun- 
tries. In  a  few  years  he  added  two  and  a 
half  millions  to  Irish  taxation,  at  a  moment 
when  the  country,  devastated  by  famine, 
was  sinking  under  the  loss  of  its  corn  trade 
through  the  English  law,  and  wasting  away 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    227 

by  emigration  to  half  its  former  population. 
In  1896  a  Financial  Commission  reported 
that  the  Act  of  Union  had  laid  on  Ireland  a 
burden  she  was  unable  to  bear;  and  that,  in 
spite  of  the  Union  pledge  that  the  ability  of 
Ireland  to  pay  should  always  be  taken  into 
account,  she  was  paying  one-eleventh  of  the 
tax  revenue  of  the  United  Kingdom  while 
her  taxable  capacity  was  one-twentieth  or 
less.  While  Great  Britain  paid  less  than 
two  shillings  in  every  pound  of  her  taxable 
surplus,  Ireland  paid  about  ten  shillings 
in  every  pound  of  hers.  No  relief  was 
given. 

Under  this  drain  of  her  wealth  the  poverty 
or  Ireland  was  intensified,  material  progress 
was  impossible,  and  one  bad  season  was 
enough  to  produce  wide  distress,  and  two 
a  state  of  famine.  Meanwhile,  the  cost 
of  administration  was  wasteful  and  lavish, 
fixed  on  the  high  prices  of  the  English  scale, 
and  vastly  more  expensive  than  the  cost  of 
a  government  founded  on  domestic  support 
and  acceptable  to  the  people.  The  doom  of 
an  exhausting  poverty  was  laid  on  Ireland 
by  a  rich  and  extravagant  partner,  who  fixed 


228  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

the  expenses  for  English  purposes,  called  for 
the  money,  and  kept  the  books. 

The  Union  intensified  the  alien  temper 
of  Irish  government.  We  may  remember 
the  scandal  caused  lately  by  the  phrase  of 
a  great  Irish  administrator  that  Ireland 
should  be  governed  according  to  Irish  ideas. 
Dublin  Castle,  no  longer  controlled  by  an 
Irish  parliament,  entrenched  itself  more 
firmly  against  the  people.  Some  well-mean- 
ing governors  went  over  to  Ireland,  but  the 
omnipotent  Castle  machine  broke  their  efforts 
for  impartial  rule  or  regard  for  the  opinion 
of  the  country.  The  Protestant  Ascendancy 
openly  reminded  the  Castle  that  its  very 
existence  hung  on  the  Orange  associations. 
Arms  were  supplied  free  from  Dublin  to 
the  Orangemen  while  all  Catholics  were 
disarmed.  The  jobbing  of  the  grand  juries 
to  enrich  themselves  out  of  the  poor — the 
traffic  of  magistrates  who  violated  their  duties 
and  their  oaths — these  were  unchanged. 
Justice  was  so  far  forgotten  that  the  presiding 
judge  at  the  trial  of  O'Connell  spoke  of  the 
counsel  for  the  accused  as  "the  gentleman 
on  the  other  side."    Juries  were  packed  by 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    229 

the  sheriffs  with  Protestants,  by  whom  all 
Orangemen  were  acquitted,  all  Catholics 
condemned,  and  the  credit  of  the  law  lowered 
for  both  by  a  system  which  made  the  jury- 
man a  tool  and  the  prisoner  a  victim.  It  is 
strange  that  no  honest  man  should  have 
protested  against  such  a  use  of  his  person 
and  his  creed.,  In  the  case  of  O'Connell  the 
Chief  Justice  of  England  stated  that  the 
practice  if  not  remedied  must  render  trial  by 
jury  "a  mockery,  a  delusion,  and  a  snare"; 
but  jury-packing  with  safe  men  remained 
the  invariable  custom  till  1906. 

Nothing  but  evil  to  Ireland  followed  from 
carrying  her  affairs  to  an  English  parliament. 
The  government  refused  the  promised  eman- 
cipation, refused  tithe  reform.  Englishmen 
could  not  understand  Irish  conditions.  The 
political  economy  they  advocated  for  their 
own  country  had  no  relation  to  Ireland.  The 
Irish  members  found  themselves,  as  English 
officials  had  foretold  in  advocating  the  Union, 
a  minority  wholly  without  influence.  Session 
after  session,  one  complained,  measures  sup- 
ported by  Irish  members,  which  would  have 
been  hailed   with  enthusiasm  by  an   Irish 


230  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

parliament,  were  rejected  by  the  English. 
Session  after  session  measures  vehemently 
resisted  by  the  Irish  members  were  forced  on 
a  reluctant  nation  by  English  majorities. 
When  Ireland  asked  to  be  governed  by  the 
same  laws  as  England,  she  was  told  the  two 
countries  were  different  and  required  different 
treatment.  When  she  asked  for  any  deviation 
from  the  English  system,  she  was  told  that 
she  must  bow  to  the  established  laws  and 
customs  of  Great  Britain.  The  reports  of 
royal  commissions  fell  dead — such  as  that 
which  in  1845  reported  that  the  sufferings  of 
the  Irish,  borne  with  exemplary  patience,  were 
greater  than  the  people  of  any  other  country 
in  Europe  had  to  sustain.  Nothing  was  done. 
Instead  of  the  impartial  calm  promised  at 
the  Union,  Ireland  was  made  the  battle-cry 
of  English  parties;  and  questions  that  con- 
cerned her  life  or  death  were  important  at 
Westminster  as  they  served  the  exigencies  of 
the  government  or  the  opposition. 

All  the  dangers  of  the  Union  were  increased 
by  its  effect  in  drawing  Irish  landlords  to 
London.  Their  rents  followed  them,  and  the 
wealth  spent  by  absentees  founded  no  indus- 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    231 

tries  at  home,  A  land  system  brought  about 
by  confiscation,  and  developed  by  absentees, 
meant  unreclaimed  wastes,  lands  half  culti- 
vated, and  neglected  people.  Landlords,  said 
an  indignant  judge  of  wide  experience  in  a 
charge  to  a  jury  in  1814,  should  build  their 
tenants  houses,  and  give  them  at  least  what 
they  had  not  as  yet,  "the  comforts  of  an 
English  sow."  To  pay  rent  and  taxes  in 
England  the  toilers  raised  stores  of  corn  and 
cattle  for  export  there,  from  the  value  of 
eight  million  pounds  in  1826  to  seventeen 
million  pounds  of  food  stuffs  in  1848,  and  so 
on.  They  grew  potatoes  to  feed  themselves. 
If  the  price  of  corn  fell  prodigiously — as  at  the 
end  of  the  Napoleonic  war,  or  at  the  passing 
of  the  corn  laws  in  England — the  cheaper 
bread  was  no  help  to  the  peasants,  most  of 
whom  could  never  afford  to  eat  it;  it  only 
doubled  their  labour  to  send  out  greater  ship- 
loads of  provisions  for  the  charges  due  in 
England.  On  the  other  hand,  if  potatoes 
rotted,  famine  swept  over  the  country  among 
its  fields  of  corn  and  cattle.  And  when  rent 
failed,  summary  powers  of  eviction  were  given 
at  Westminster  under  English  theories  for  use 


232  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

in  Ireland  alone;  "and  if  anyone  would  defend 
his  farm  it  is  here  denominated  rebellion." 
Families  were  flung  on  the  bogs  and  mountain 
sides  to  live  on  wild  turnips  and  nettles, 
to  gather  chickweed,  sorrel,  and  seaweed, 
and  to  sink  under  the  fevers  that  followed 
vagrancy,  starvation,  cold,  and  above  all  the 
broken  hearts  of  men  hunted  from  their 
homes.  In  famine  time  the  people  to  save 
themselves  from  death  were  occasionally 
compelled  to  use  blood  taken  from  live  bul- 
locks, boiled  up  with  a  little  oatmeal;  and 
the  appalling  sight  was  seen  of  feeble  women 
gliding  across  the  country  with  their  pitchers, 
actually  trampling  upon  fertility  and  fatness, 
to  collect  in  the  corner  of  a  grazier's  farm  for 
their  little  portion  of  blood.  Five  times 
between  1822  and  1837  there  were  famines 
of  lesser  degree:  but  two  others,  1817  and 
1847,  were  noted  as  among  the  half-dozen 
most  terrible  recorded  in  Europe  and  Asia 
during  the  century.  From  1846  to  1848  over 
a  million  lay  dead  of  hunger,  while  in  a  year 
food-stuffs  for  seventeen  million  pounds  were 
sent  to  England.  English  soldiers  guarded 
from  the  starving  the  fields  of  corn  and  the 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    233 

waggons  that  carried  it  to  the  ports;  herds 
of  cattle  were  shipped,  and  skins  of  asses 
which  had  served  the  famishing  for  food. 
New  evictions  on  an  enormous  scale  followed 
the  famine,  the  clearance  of  what  was  then 
called  in  the  phrase  of  current  English 
economics  "the  surplus  population,"  "the 
overstock  tenantry."  They  died,  or  fled  in 
hosts  to  America — Ireland  pouring  out  on 
the  one  side  her  great  stores  or  "surplus 
food,"  on  the  other  her  "surplus  people," 
for  whom  there  was  nothing  to  eat.  In  the 
twenty  years  that  followed  the  men  and 
women  who  had  fled  to  America  sent  back 
some  thirteen  millions  to  keep  a  roof  over  the 
heads  of  the  old  and  the  children  they  had  left 
behind.  It  was  a  tribute  for  the  landlords' 
pockets — a  rent  which  could  never  have  been 
paid  from  the  land  they  leased.  The  loans 
raised  for  expenditure  on  the  Irish  famine 
were  charged  by  England  on  the  Irish  taxes 
for  repayment. 

No  Irish  parliament,  no  matter  what  its 
constitution,  could  have  allowed  the  country 
to  drift  into  such  irretrievable  ruin.  O'Con- 
nell  constantly  protested  that  rather  than  the 


234  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Union  he  would  have  the  old  Protestant 
parliament.  "Any  body  would  serve  if  only 
it  is  in  Ireland,"  cried  a  leading  Catholic 
nationalist  in  ParnelFs  time;  "the  Protestant 
synod  would  do."  In  the  despair  of  Ireland, 
the  way  was  flung  open  to  public  agitation,  and 
to  private  law  which  could  only  wield  the 
weapons  of  the  outlaw.  All  methods  were 
tried  to  reach  the  distant  inattention  of 
England.  There  were  savage  outbursts  of 
men  often  starving  and  homeless,  always  on 
the  edge  of  famine — Levellers,  Threshers,  and 
the  like;  or  Whiteboys  who  were  in  fact  a  vast 
trades  union  for  the  protection  of  the  Irish 
peasantry,  to  bring  some  order  and  equity  into 
relations  of  landlord  and  tenant.  Peaceful 
organisation  was  tried;  the  Catholic  Associ- 
ation for  Emancipation  founded  by  O'Connell 
in  1823,  an  open  society  into  which  Protest- 
ants and  Catholics  alike  were  welcomed,  kept 
the  peace  in  Ireland  for  five  years;  outrage 
ceased  with  its  establishment  and  revived  with 
its  destruction.  His  Association  for  Repeal 
(1832-1844)  again  lifted  the  people  from  law- 
less insurrection  to  the  disciplined  enthusiasm 
of  citizens  for  justice.    A  Young  Ireland  move- 


IRELAND   UNDER  THE   UNION    235 

ment  (1842-1848)  under  honoured  names  such 
as  Thomas  Davis  and  John  Mitchel  and  Ga- 
van  Duffy  and  Smith  O'Brien  and  others  with 
them,  sought  to  destroy  sectarian  divisions, 
to  spread  a  new  literature,  to  recover  Irish 
history,  and  to  win  self-government,  land 
reform,  and  education  for  a  united  people  of 
Irish  and  English,  Protestant  and  Catholic. 
The  suppression  of  O'Connell's  peaceful 
movement  by  the  government  forced  on  vio- 
lent counsels;  and  ended  in  the  rising  of  Smith 
O'Brien  as  the  only  means  left  him  of  calling 
attention  to  the  state  of  the  country.  The 
disturbances  that  followed  have  left  their 
mark  in  the  loop-holed  police  barracks  that 
covered  Ireland.  There  was  a  Tenant  League 
(1852)  and  a  North  and  South  League.  All 
else  failing,  a  national  physical  force  party  was 
formed;  for  its  name  this  organization  went 
back  to  the  dawn  of  Irish  historic  life — to  the 
Fiana,  those  Fenian  national  militia  vowed 
to  guard  the  shores  of  Ireland.  The  Fenians 
(1865)  resisted  outrage,  checked  agrarian 
crime,  and  sought  to  win  self-government  by 
preparing  for  open  war.  A  great  constitu- 
tionalist and  sincere  Protestant,  Isaac  Butt, 


236  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

led  a  peaceful  parliamentary  movement  for 
Home  Rule  (1870-1877);  after  him  Charles 
Stewart  Parnell  fought  in  the  same  cause  for 
fourteen  years  (1877-1891)  and  died  with 
victory  almost  in  sight.  Michael  Davitt,  fol- 
lowing the  advice  of  Lalor  thirty  years  be- 
fore, founded  a  Land  League  (1879)  to  be 
inevitably  merged  in  the  wider  national  issue. 
"Wave  after  wave  of  agitation  passed  over  the 
island.  The  manner  of  the  national  struggle 
changed,  peaceful  or  violent,  led  by  Protestant 
or  Catholic,  by  men  of  English  blood  or  of 
Gaelic,  but  behind  all  change  lay  the  fixed 
purpose  of  Irish  self-government.  For  thirty- 
five  years  after  the  Union  Ireland  was  ruled 
for  three  years  out  of  every  four  by  laws  giv- 
ing extraordinary  powers  to  the  government; 
and  in  the  next  fifty  years  (1835-1885)  there 
were  only  three  without  coercion  acts  and 
crime  acts.  By  such  contrasts  of  law  in  the 
two  countries  the  Union  made  a  deep  sever- 
ance between  the  islands. 

In  these  conflicts  there  was  not  now,  as 
there  had  never  been  in  their  history,  a  reli- 
gious war  on  the  part  of  Irishmen.  The 
oppressed  people  were  of  one  creed,  and  the 


IRELAND   UNDER  THE  UNION  237 

administration  of  the  other.  Protestant  and 
Catholic  had  come  to  mean  ejector  and 
ejected,  the  armed  Orangeman  and  the  dis- 
armed peasant,  the  agent-  or  clergy-magis- 
trate and  the  broken  tenant  before  his  too 
partial  judgment-seat.  In  all  cases  where 
conflicting  classes  are  divided  into  two  creeds, 
religious  incidents  will  crop  up,  or  will  be 
forced  up,  to  embitter  the  situation;  but  the 
Irish  struggle  was  never  a  religious  war. 

Another  distinction  must  be  noted.  Though 
Ireland  was  driven  to  the  "worst  form  of 
civil  convulsion,  a  war  for  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence," there  was  more  Irish  than  the 
battle  for  food.  Those  who  have  seen  the 
piled  up  graves  round  the  earth  where  the  first 
Irish  saints  were  laid,  will  know  that  the 
Irishman,  steeped  in  his  national  history,  had 
in  his  heart  not  his  potato  plot  alone,  but  the 
thought  of  the  home  of  his  fathers,  and  in 
the  phrase  of  Irish  saints,  "the  place  of  his 
resurrection." 

If  we  consider  the  state  of  the  poor,  and 
the  position  of  the  millions  of  Irishmen  who 
had  been  long  shut  out  from  any  share  in 
public  affairs,  and  forbidden  to  form  popular 


238  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

conventions,  we  must  watch  with  amazement 
the  upspringing  under  O'Connell  of  the  old 
idea  of  national  self-government.  Deep  in 
their  hearts  lay  the  memory  carried  down  by 
bards  and  historians  of  a  nation  whose  law 
had  been  maintained  in  assemblies  of  a  willing 
people.  In  O'Connell  the  Irish  found  a 
leader  who  had  like  themselves  inherited  the 
sense  of  the  old  Irish  tradition.  To  escape 
English  laws  against  gatherings  and  conven- 
tions of  the  Irish,  O'Connell's  associations  had 
to  be  almost  formless,  and  perpetually  shifting 
in  manner  and  in  name.  His  methods  would 
have  been  wholly  impossible  without  a  rare 
intelligence  in  the  peasantry.  Local  gather- 
ings conducted  by  voluntary  groups  over  the 
country;  conciliation  courts  where  justice 
was  carried  out  apart  from  the  ordinary  courts 
as  a  protest  against  their  corruption;  monster 
meetings  organised  without  the  slightest  dis- 
order; voluntary  suppression  of  crime  and 
outrage — in  these  we  may  see  not  merely  an 
astonishing  popular  intelligence,  but  the 
presence  of  an  ancient  tradition.  At  the  first 
election  in  which  the  people  resisted  the  right 
of  landlords  to  dictate  their  vote  (1826),  a 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    239 

procession  miles  in  length  streamed  into 
Waterford  in  military  array  and  unbroken 
tranquillity.  They  allowed  no  rioting,  and 
kept  their  vow  of  total  abstinence  from 
whisky  during  the  election.  A  like  public 
virtue  was  shown  in  the  Clare  election  two 
years  later  (1828)  when  30,000  men  camped  in 
Ennis  for  a  week,  with  milk  and  potatoes  dis- 
tributed to  them  by  their  priests,  all  spirits 
renounced,  and  the  peace  not  broken  once 
throughout  the  week.  As  O'Connell  drew 
towards  Limerick  and  reached  the  Stone 
where  the  broken  Treaty  had  been  signed, 
50,000  men  sent  up  their  shout  of  victory  at 
this  peaceful  redeeming  of  the  violated  pledges 
of  1690.  In  the  Repeal  meetings  two  to  four 
hundred  thousand  men  assembled,  at  Tara 
and  other  places  whose  fame  was  in  the  heart 
of  every  Irishman  there,  and  the  spirit  of  the 
nation  was  shown  by  a  gravity  and  order 
which  allowed  not  a  single  outrage.  National 
hope  and  duty  stirred  the  two  millions  who  in 
the  crusade  of  Father  Mathew  took  the  vow 
of  temperance. 

In   the   whole   of   Irish   history   no   time 
brought    such    calamity    to   Ireland    as    the 


240  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

Victorian  age.  "I  leave  Ireland,"  said  one, 
"like  a  corpse  on  the  dissecting  table."  "The 
Celts  are  gone,"  said  Englishmen,  seeing  the 
endless  and  disastrous  emigration.  "The 
Irish  are  gone,  and  gone  with  a  vengeance." 
That  such  people  should  carry  their  intermi- 
nable discontent  to  some  far  place  seemed  to 
end  the  trouble.  "Now  for  the  first  time  these 
six  hundred  years,"  said  The  Times,  "England 
has  Ireland  at  her  mercy,  and  can  deal  with 
her  as  she  pleases."  But  from  this  death 
Ireland  rose  again.  Thirty  years  after 
O'Connell  Parnell  took  up  his  work.  He 
used  the  whole  force  of  the  Land  League 
founded  by  Davitt  to  relieve  distress  and  fight 
for  the  tenants'  rights;  but  he  used  the  land 
agitation  to  strengthen  the  National  move- 
ment. He  made  his  meaning  clear.  What 
did  it  matter,  he  said,  who  had  possession  of 
a  few  acres,  if  there  was  no  National  spirit  to 
save  the  country;  he  would  never  have  taken 
off  his  coat  for  anything  less  than  to  make  a 
nation.  In  his  fight  he  held  the  people  as 
no  other  man  had  done,  not  even  O'Connell. 
The  conflict  was  steeped  in  passion.  In  1881 
the  government  asked  for  an  act  giving  them 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    241 

power  to  arrest  without  trial  all  Irishmen 
suspected  of  illegal  projects — a  power  beyond 
all  coercion  hitherto.  O'Connell  had  opposed 
a  coercion  act  in  1833  for  nineteen  nights; 
Parnell  in  1881  fought  for  thirty-two  nights. 
Parliament  had  become  the  keeper  of  Irish 
tyrannies,  not  of  her  liberties,  and  its  con- 
ventional forms  were  less  dear  to  Irishmen 
than  the  freedom  of  which  it  should  be  the 
guardian.  He  was  suspended,  with  thirty- 
four  Irish  members,  and  303  votes  against 
46  carried  a  bill  by  which  over  a  thousand 
Irishmen  were  imprisoned  at  the  mere  will  of 
the  Castle,  among  them  Parnell  himself.  The 
passion  of  rage  reached  its  extreme  height 
with  the  publication  in  The  Times  (1888)  of 
a  facsimile  letter  from  Parnell,  to  prove  his 
consent  to  a  paid  system  of  murder  and  out- 
rage. A  special  commission  found  it  to  be  a 
forgery. 

With  the  rejection  of  Gladstone's  Home 
Rule  bills  in  1886  and  1893,  and  with  the 
death  of  Parnell  (1891),  Irish  nationalists 
were  thrown  into  different  camps  as  to  the 
means  to  pursue,  but  they  never  faltered  in 
the  main  purpose.    That  remains  as  firm  as 


242  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

in  the  times  of  O'Connell,  Thomas  Davis, 
John  O'Leary,  and  Parnell,  and  rises  once 
more  to-day  as  the  fixed  unchanging  demand, 
while  the  whole  Irish  people,  laying  aside 
agitations  and  controversies,  stand  waiting 
to  hear  the  end. 

The  national  movement  had  another  side, 
the  bringing  back  of  the  people  to  the  land. 
The  English  parliament  took  up  the  question 
under  pressure  of  violent  agitation  in  Ireland. 
By  a  series  of  Acts  the  people  were  assured  of 
fair  rents  and  security  from  eviction.  Ver- 
dicts of  judicial  bodies  tended  to  prove  that 
peasants  were  paying  60  per  cent,  above  the 
actual  value  of  the  land.  But  the  great  Act 
of  1903 — a  work  inspired  by  an  Irishman's 
intellect  and  heart — brought  the  final  solu- 
tion, enabling  the  great  mass  of  the  tenants  to 
buy  their  land  by  instalments.  Thus  the 
land  war  of  seven  hundred  years,  the  war  of 
kings  and  parliaments  and  planters,  was 
brought  to  a  dramatic  close,  and  the  soil  of 
Ireland  begins  again  to  belong  to  her  people. 

There  was  yet  another  stirring  of  the  na- 
tional idea.  In  its  darkest  days  the  country 
had  remained  true  to  the  old  Irish  spirit  of 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    243 

learning,  that  fountain  of  the  nation's  life.  In 
O'ConnelPs  time  the  "poor  scholar"  who  took 
his  journey  to  "the  Munster  schools"  was 
sent  out  with  offerings  laid  on  the  parish 
altars  by  Protestants  and  Catholics  alike;  as 
he  trudged  with  his  bag  of  books  and  the  fees 
for  the  master  sewn  in  the  cuff  of  his  coat,  he 
was  welcomed  in  every  farm,  and  given  of  the 
best  in  the  famishing  hovels:  "The  Lord 
prosper  him,  and  every  one  that  has  the  heart 
set  upon  the  learning."  Bards  and  harpers 
and  dancers  wandered  among  the  cottages. 
A  famous  bard  Raftery,  playing  at  a  dance 
heard  one  ask,  "Who  is  the  musician?"  and 
the  blind  fiddler  answered  him: 

"I  am  Raftery  the  poet, 
Full  of  hope  and  love, 
With  eyes  that  have  no  light, 
With  gentleness  that  has  no  misery. 

Going  west  upon  my  pilgrimage, 
Guided  by  the  light  of  my  heart, 
Feeble  and  tired, 
To  the  end  of  my  road. 

Behold  me  now, 
With  my  face  to  a  wall, 
A-playing  music 
To  empty  pockets." 

Unknown  scribes  still  copied  piously  the 
national    records.      A    Louth    schoolmaster 


244  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

could  tell  all  the  stars  and  constellations  of 
heaven  under  the  old  Irish  forms  and  names. 
A  vision  is  given  to  us  through  a  government 
Ordnance  Survey  of  the  fire  of  zeal,  the  hunger 
of  knowledge,  among  the  tillers  and  the  ten- 
ants. In  1817  a  dying  farmer  in  Kilkenny 
repeated  several  times  to  his  sons  his  descent 
back  to  the  wars  of  1641  and  behind  that  to  a 
king  of  Munster  in  210  a.d. — directing  the 
eldest  never  to  forget  it.  This  son  took  his 
brother,  John  O'Donovan,  (1809-1861)  to 
study  in  Dublin;  in  Kilkenny  farmhouses  he 
learned  the  old  language  and  history  of  his 
race.  At  the  same  time  another  Irish  boy, 
Eugene  O'Curry  (1796-1862),  of  the  same  old 
Munster  stock,  working  on  his  father's  farm 
in  great  poverty,  learned  from  him  much 
knowledge  of  Irish  literature  and  music.  The 
Ordnance  Survey,  the  first  peripatetic  univer- 
sity Ireland  had  seen  since  the  wanderings 
of  her  ancient  scholars,  gave  to  O'Donovan 
and  O'Curry  their  opportunity,  where  they 
could  meet  learned  men,  and  use  their  heredi- 
tary knowledge.  A  mass  of  material  was  laid 
up  by  their  help.  Passionate  interest  was 
shown  by  the  people  in  the  memorials  of  their 
ancient  life — giants'  rings,  cairns,  and  mighty 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    245 

graves,  the  twenty-nine  thousand  mounds 
or  moats  that  have  been  counted,  the  raths 
of  their  saints  and  scholars — each  with  its 
story  living  on  the  lips  of  the  people  till  the 
great  famine  and  the  death  or  emigration  of 
the  people  broke  that  long  tradition  of  the 
race.  The  cry  arose  that  the  survey  was 
pandering  to  the  national  spirit.  It  was  sud- 
denly closed  (1837),  the  men  dismissed,  no 
materials  published,  the  documents  locked  up 
in  government  offices.  But  for  O 'Donovan 
and  O'Curry  what  prodigies  of  work  remained. 
Once  more  the  death  of  hope  seemed  to  call 
out  the  pieties  of  the  Irish  scholar  for  his  race, 
the  fury  of  his  intellectual  zeal,  the  passion  of 
his  inheritance  of  learning.  In  the  blackest 
days  perhaps  of  all  Irish  history  O'Donovan 
took  up  Michael  O'Clery's  work  of  two  hun- 
dred years  before,  the  Annals  of  the  Four 
Masters,  added  to  his  manuscript  the  mass  of 
his  own  learning,  and  gave  to  his  people  this 
priceless  record  of  their  country  (1856). 
Among  a  number  of  works  that  cannot  be 
counted  here,  he  made  a  Dictionary  which 
recalls  the  old  pride  of  Irishmen  in  their 
language.    O'Curry  brought  from  his  humble 


246  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

training  an  incredible  industry,  great  stores 
of  ancient  lore,  and  an  amazing  and  delicate 
skill  as  a  scribe.  All  modern  historians  have 
dug  in  the  mine  of  these  men's  work.  They 
open  to  Anglo-Irish  scholars  such  as  Dr. 
Reeves  and  Dr.  Todd,  a  new  world  of  Irish 
history.  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson  began  in  1833 
to  give  to  readers  of  English  the  stories  of  Ire- 
land. George  Petrie  collected  Irish  music 
through  all  the  west,  over  a  thousand  airs, 
and  worked  at  Irish  inscriptions  and  crosses 
and  round  towers.  Lord  Dunraven  studied 
architecture,  and  is  said  to  have  visited  every 
barony  in  Ireland  and  nearly  every  island  on 
the  coast. 

These  men  were  nearly  all  Protestants; 
they  were  all  patriots.  Potent  Irish  influences 
could  have  stirred  a  resident  gentry  and  resi- 
dent parliament  with  a  just  pride  in  the  great 
memorials  of  an  Ireland  not  dead  but  still 
living  in  the  people's  heart.  The  failure  of 
the  hope  was  not  the  least  of  the  evils  of  the 
Union.  The  drift  of  landlords  to  London  had 
broken  a  national  sympathy  between  them 
and  the  people,  which  had  been  steadily 
growing    through    the    eighteenth    century. 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    247 

Their  sons  no  longer  learned  Irish,  nor  heard 
the  songs  and  stories  of  the  past.  The  brief 
tale  of  the  ordnance  survey  has  given  us  a 
measure  of  the  intelligence  that  had  been 
wasted  or  destroyed  by  neglect  in  Ireland. 
Archbishop  Whately  proposed  to  use  the  new 
national  schools  so  as  to  make  this  destruc- 
tion systematic,  and  to  put  an  end  to  national 
traditions.  The  child  who  knew  only  Irish 
was  given  a  teacher  who  knew  nothing  but 
English;  his  history  book  mentioned  Ireland 
twice  only — a  place  conquered  by  Henry  II., 
and  made  into  an  English  province  by  the 
Union.  The  quotation  "This  is  my  own,  my 
native  land,"  was  struck  out  of  the  reading- 
book  as  pernicious,  and  the  Irish  boy  was 
taught  to  thank  God  for  being  "a  happy 
English  child."  A  Connacht  peasant  lately 
summed  up  the  story:  "I  suppose  the  Famine 
and  the  National  Schools  took  the  heart  out 
of  the  people."  In  fact  famine  and  emigra- 
tion made  the  first  great  break  in  the  Irish 
tradition  that  had  been  the  dignity  and  con- 
solation of  the  peasantry;  the  schools  com- 
pleted the  ruin.  In  these,  under  English 
influence,    the    map    of    Ireland    has    been 


248  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

rolled   up,    and   silence   has   fallen   on   her 
heroes. 

Even  out  of  this  deep  there  came  a  revival. 
Whitley  Stokes  published  his  first  Irish  work 
the  year  after  O'Curry's  death;  and  has  been 
followed  by  a  succession  of  laborious  students. 
Through  a  School  of  Irish  Learning  Dublin 
is  becoming  a  national  centre  of  true  Irish 
scholarship,  and  may  hope  to  be  the  leader 
of  the  world  in  this  great  branch  of  study. 
The  popular  Irish  movement  manifested  it- 
self in  the  Gaelic  League,  whose  branches 
now  cover  all  Ireland,  and  which  has  been  the 
greatest  educator  of  the  people  since  the  time 
of  Thomas  Davis.  Voluntary  colleges  have 
sprung  up  in  every  province,  where  earnest 
students  learn  the  language,  history,  and 
music  of  their  country;  and  on  a  fine  day 
teacher  and  scholars  gathered  in  the  open 
air  under  a  hedge  recall  the  ancient  Irish 
schools  where  brehon  or  chronicler  led  his 
pupils  under  a  tree.  A  new  spirit  of  self- 
respect,  intelligence,  and  public  duty  has 
followed  the  work  of  the  Gaelic  League;  it 
has  united  Catholic  and  Protestant,  landlord 
and  peasant.     And  through  all  creeds  and 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    249 

classes  a  desire  has  quickened  men  to  serve 
their  country  in  its  social  and  industrial 
life;  and  by  Agricultural  Societies,  and 
Industrial  Development  Societies,  to  awaken 
again  her  trade  and  manufactures. 

The  story  is  unfinished.  Once  again  we 
stand  at  the  close  of  another  experiment  of 
England  in  the  government  of  Ireland. 
Each  of  them  has  been  founded  on  the  idea 
of  English  interests;  each  has  lasted  about  a 
hundred  years —  "Tudor  conquest,"  Planta- 
tions, an  English  parliament,  a  Union  parlia- 
ment. All  alike  have  ended  in  a  disordered 
finance  and  a  flight  of  the  people  from  the 
land. 

Grattan  foretold  the  failure  of  the  Union 
and  its  cause.  "As  Ireland,"  he  said,  "is 
necessary  to  Great  Britain,  so  is  complete 
and  perfect  liberty  necessary  to  Ireland,  and 
both  islands  must  be  drawn  much  closer  to 
a  free  constitution,  that  they  may  be  drawn 
closer  to  one  another."  In  England  we  have 
seen  the  advance  to  that  freer  constitution. 
The  democracy  has  entered  into  larger 
liberties,  and  has  brought  new  ideals.  The 
growth  of  that  popular  life  has  been  greatly 


250  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

advanced  by  the  faith  of  Ireland.  Ever 
since  Irish  members  helped  to  carry  the 
Reform  Acts  they  have  been  on  the  side  of 
liberty,  humanity,  peace,  and  justice.  They 
have  been  the  most  steadfast  believers  in 
constitutional  law  against  privilege,  and 
its  most  unswerving  defenders.  At  West- 
minster they  have  always  stood  for  hu- 
man rights,  as  nobler  even  than  rights  of 
property.  What  Chatham  foresaw  has  come 
true:  the  Irish  in  the  English  parliament 
have  been  powerful  missionaries  of  democ- 
racy. A  freedom-loving  Ireland  has  been  con- 
quering her  conquerors  in  the  best  sense. 

The  changes  of  the  last  century  have  deeply 
affected  men's  minds.  The  broadening  liber- 
ties of  England  as  a  free  country,  the  demo- 
cratic movements  that  have  brought  new 
classes  into  government,  the  wider  experience 
of  imperial  methods,  the  growing  influence 
of  men  of  good-will,  have  tended  to  change 
her  outlook  to  Ireland.  In  the  last  genera- 
tion she  has  been  forced  to  think  more  gravely 
of  Irish  problems.  She  has  pledged  her  credit 
to  close  the  land  question  and  create  a  peasant 
proprietary.     With  any  knowledge  of  Irish 


IRELAND  UNDER  THE  UNION    251 

history  the  religious  alarm,  the  last  cry  of 
prejudice,  must  inevitably  disappear.  The 
old  notion  of  Ireland  as  the  "property"  of 
England,  and  of  its  exploitation  for  the  ad- 
vantage of  England,  is  falling  into  the  past. 

A  mighty  spirit  of  freedom  too  has  passed 
over  the  great  Colonies  and  Dominions. 
They  since  their  beginning  have  given  shelter 
to  outlawed  Irishmen  flying  from  despair  at 
home.  They  have  won  their  own  pride  of 
freedom,  and  have  all  formally  proclaimed 
their  judgment  that  Ireland  should  be 
allowed  the  right  to  shape  her  own  govern- 
ment. The  United  States,  who  owe  so  much 
to  Irishmen  in  their  battle  for  independence, 
and  in  the  labours  of  their  rising  prosperity, 
have  supported  the  cause  of  Ireland  for  the 
last  hundred  years;  ever  since  the  first 
important  meeting  in  New  York  to  express 
American  sympathy  with  Ireland  was  held 
in  1825,  when  President  Jackson,  of  Irish 
origin,  a  Protestant,  is  said  to  have  promised 
the  first  thousand  dollars  to  the  Irish  eman- 
cipation fund. 

In  Ireland  itself  we  see  a  people  that  has 
now  been  given  some  first  opportunities  of 


252  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

self-dependence  and  discipline  under  the  new 
conditions  of  land  ownership  and  of  county 
government.  We  see  too  the  breaking  up 
of  the  old  solid  Unionist  phalanx,  the  dying 
down  of  ancient  fears,  the  decaying  of  old 
habits  of  dependence  on  military  help  from 
England,  and  a  promise  of  revival  of  the 
large  statesmanship  that  adorned  the  days 
of  Kildare  and  of  Grattan.  It  is  singular  to 
reflect  that  on  the  side  of  foreign  domination, 
through  seven  hundred  years  of  invasion 
and  occupation,  not  a  single  man,  Norman  or 
English,  warrior  or  statesman,  has  stood  out 
as  a  hero  to  leave  his  name,  even  in  England, 
on  the  lips  or  in  the  hearts  of  men.  The 
people  who  were  defending  their  homes 
and  liberties  had  their  heroes,  men  of  every 
creed  and  of  every  blood,  Gaelic,  Norman, 
English,  Anglican,  Catholic,  and  Presby- 
terian. Against  the  stormy  back-ground  of 
those  prodigious  conflicts,  those  immeasur- 
able sorrows,  those  thousand  sites  consecrated 
by  great  deeds,  lofty  figures  emerge  whom 
the  people  have  exalted  with  the  poetry  of 
their  souls,  and  crowned  with  love  and  grati- 
tude— the  first  martyr  for  Ireland  of  "the 


IRELAND   UNDER  THE  UNION    253 

foreigners"  Earl  Thomas  of  Desmond,  the 
soul  of  another  Desmond  wailing  in  the 
Atlantic  winds,  Kildare  riding  from  his  tomb 
on  the  horse  with  the  silver  shoes,  Bishop 
Bedell,  Owen  Roe  and  Hugh  O'Neill,  Red 
Hugh  O'Donnell,  Sarsfield,  Lord  Edward 
Fitzgerald,  Robert  Emmett,  O'Connell, 
Davis,  Parnell — men  of  peace  and  men  of 
war,  but  all  lovers  of  a  free  nation. 

In  memory  of  the  long,  the  hospitable  roll 
of  their  patriots,  in  memory  of  their  long 
fidelities,  in  memory  of  their  national  faith, 
and  of  their  story  of  honour  and  of  suffering, 
the  people  of  Ireland  once  more  claim  a 
government  of  their  own  in  their  native  land, 
that  shall  bind  together  the  whole  nation 
of  all  that  live  on  Irish  soil,  and  create  for 
all  a  common  obligation  and  a  common 
prosperity.  An  Irish  nation  of  a  double 
race  will  not  fear  to  look  back  on  Irish 
history.  The  tradition  of  that  soil,  so 
steeped  in  human  passion,  in  joy  and  sorrow, 
still  rises  from  the  earth.  It  lives  in  the 
hearts  of  men  who  see  in  Ireland  a  ground 
made  sacred  by  the  rare  intensity  of  human 
life  over  every  inch  of  it,  one  of  the  richest 


254  IRISH  NATIONALITY 

possessions  that  has  ever  been  bequeathed 
by  the  people  of  any  land  whatever  to  the 
successors  and  inheritors  of  their  name.  The 
tradition  of  national  life  created  by  the  Irish 
has  ever  been  a  link  of  fellowship  between 
classes,  races,  and  religions.  The  natural 
union  approaches  of  the  Irish  Nation — the 
union  of  all  her  children  that  are  born  under 
the  breadth  of  her  skies,  fed  by  the  fatness 
of  her  fields,  and  nourished  by  the  civilisa- 
tion of  her  dead. 


SOME    IRISH  WRITERS   ON 
IRISH  HISTORY 


Joyce,  P.  W. — Social  History  of  Ancient  Ireland.  2  vols. 
1903.  This  book  gives  a  general  survey  of  the  old  Irish 
civilisation,  pagan  and  Christian,  apart  from  political 
history. 

Ferguson,  Sir  Samuel. — Hibernian  Nights'  Entertainments. 
1906.  These  small  volumes  of  stories  are  interesting  as 
the  effort  of  Sir  S.  Ferguson  to  give  to  the  youth  of  his 
time  an  impression  of  the  heroic  character  of  their  history. 

Green,  A.  S. — The  Making  of  Ireland  and  its  Undoing  (1200- 
1600) .  1909.  An  attempt  is  here  made  to  bring  together 
evidence,  some  of  it  unused  before,  of  the  activity  of 
commerce  and  manufactures,  and  of  learning,  that  pre- 
vailed in  mediaeval  Ireland,  until  the  destruction  of  the 
Tudor  wars. 

Mitchell,  John. — Lif e  and  Times  of  Aodh  O'Neill.  1868.  A 
small  book  which  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  a  great  Irish  hero, 
and  of  the  later  Elizabethan  wars. 

Taylor,  J.  F—  Owen  Roe  O'Neill.  1904.  This  small  book  is 
the  best  account  of  a  very  great  Irishman;  and  gives  the 
causes  of  the  Irish  insurrection  in  1641,  and  the  war  to 
1650. 

Davis,  Thomas. — The  Patriot  Parliament  of  1689.  1893.  A 
brief  but  important  study  of  this  Parliament.  It  illus- 
trates the  Irish  spirit  of  tolerance  in  1689,  1843,  and  1893. 

Bagwell,  Richard. — Ireland  under  the  Tudors  and  the 
Stuarts.  5  vols.  1885,  1910.  A  detailed  account  is  given 
of  the  English  policy  from  1509  to  1660,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  English  settlement,  among  a  people  regarded 
as  inferior,  devoid  of  organisation  or  civilisation. 
255 


256  IRISH  WRITERS 

Murray,  A.  E. — Commercial  Relations  between  England  and 
Ireland.  1903.  A  useful  study  is  made  here  of  the 
economic  condition  of  Ireland  from  1641,'under  the  legisla- 
tion of  the  English  Parliament,  the  Irish  Parliament,  and 
the  Union  Parliament. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H. — History  of  Ireland  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century.  5  vols.  1892.  The  study  of  the  independent 
Parliament  in  Ireland  is  the  most  original  work  of  this 
historian,  and  a  contribution  of  the  utmost  importance 
to  Irish  history.  Mr.  Lecky  did  not  make  any  special 
study  of  the  Catholic  peasantry. 

Two  Centuries  of  Irish  History  (1691-1870).  Introduction  by 
James  Bryce.  1907.  These  essays,  mostly  by  Irishmen, 
give  in  a  convenient  form  the  outlines  of  the  history  of  the 
time.     There  is  a  brief  account  of  O'Connell. 

O'Brien,  R.  Barry. — Life  of  Charles  Stewart  Parnell.  1898. 
2  vols.  This  gives  the  best  account  of  the  struggle  for 
Home  Rule  and  the  land  agitation  in  the  last  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

D'Alton,  E.  A.— History  of  Ireland  (1903-1910).  3  vols. 
This  is  the  latest  complete  history  of  Ireland. 


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